Tocqueville in Cyberspace: Using the Internet for Citizen Associations

Political theorists like Alexis de Tocqueville have long recognized the importance of citizen associations for the practice of democracy. Through participation in associations, citizens both receive an education in public affairs and create centers of political power independent of the state. Essential to participation in an association is participation in a forum, a communication space that allows for many-to-many communication in which citizens can "treat of public affairs in public" (Tocqueville, 1945, p. 109). Participation in forums suffers from numerous barriers, however, such as the need to meet in one common place, the need to meet at one common time, and the potentially high costs of participation. Online forums on the Internet avoid many of these barriers, and thus they hold the promise of facilitating the formation and operation of citizen associations. This was confirmed in 1995 by the experiences of a Boston-based citizen association, the Telecommunication Policy Roundtable-Northeast (TPR-NE). TPR-NE's uses of the Internet suggest that online forums may allow associations to be more responsive, more robust, and able to unite more members.     

Motivation and activity

Motivation is one of the most psychological topics of this science. It constitutes the very nature of what psychology is about — namely, how people regulate multiple interactions within the world, including themselves. Motivation was and is interpreted very differently, depending on the various theoretical and methodological positions. In this paper the perspective of the so-called socio-cultural or cultural-historical school which was founded by Vygotsky, Lurya, Leontyev and their co-workers will be described with the aim to reveal a number of ideas that might be useful even for research on motivation in our days. However, it is impossible to give a complete picutre of the theoretical and methodological positions of this rich and ramified tradition line here. Thus, the following explanations will be confined to one central part of it, namely the elaborated activity theory, above all, the work of Alexej Leontyev. In this paper, first the concept of activity and then the concept of motivation will be outlined in its theoretical framework. These will subsequently be made concrete with respect to motives of learning activity. Finally, some current perspectives and open problems will be mentioned.     

Between education and care? Critical reflections on early childhood policies in Germany

This article identifies the responsibilities for early childhood care and education (ECCE) in the German child and youth welfare system and shows the expansion of children's services. The official German statistics demonstrate that almost every child from the age of three to school age attends ‘Kindergarten’. Current policies and measures are therefore mainly focused on extending provision for the under‐threes. There are still enormous differences in the number of places available for children under three years of age between the eastern and western parts of Germany. Due to the increased significance of early education and the educational curricula drafted in all 16 Länder over the past few years, the qualifications required of professional pedagogues today have changed considerably. There is a broad consensus in Germany that it is necessary to redefine the course content and structure and put them on a theoretical basis. The article pinpoints the problems of children with special needs, and especially of those whose family language is not German. Despite some positive developments in German ECCE little progress has been made with regard to effectively implementing the conceptual unity of education, care and upbringing.     

Does homework behavior mediate the relation between personality and academic performance?

Past research has consistently shown that there is a relation between personality and academic performance, but much less work has focused on explaining this relation. The present study examined whether three aspects of homework behavior, namely homework time, procrastination, and learning strategies, mediate the relation between personality and academic performance, controlling for cognitive ability, track level, gender, and ethnicity. We investigated this in a nationally representative sample of about 9000 secondary school students in The Netherlands (average age 13 years). Results indicated that all personality traits were related to homework behavior, and that both personality and homework behavior were related to end-of-year grades in math and Dutch language. Nevertheless, homework behavior only partially mediated the relation between personality and grades.     

FROM PISA TO EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS: THE IMPACT OF LARGE-SCALE ASSESSMENTS ON SCIENCE EDUCATION IN GERMANY

The German education system does not traditionally rely on standardized testing. However, when the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study revealed an average performance of German students compared to other participating countries, a particular proportion of low-performing students, and remarkable disparities between the federal states, German policy makers decided for a major reform of the education system. A core piece of this reform was the introduction of National Education Standards. For science education, these standards were heavily influenced by the PISA results and its underlying framework. That is, with the standards, a paradigm shift took place from the German notion of Bildung towards the Anglo-American notion of literacy. With the introduction of these standards, a new field of empirical educational research was created: research on models of scientific literacy or competency models as a basis of benchmarking the standards. This article describes the German education system before PISA, summarizes the major findings from PISA, and describes how these findings informed the formulation of the performance standards for science education. It also details the measures undertaken to benchmark these standards. Finally, it provides insight into the issues with developing and benchmarking performance standards and points out future areas of research on evidence-based decision making in educational policy.     

Second and fourth graders' copying ability: from graphical to linguistic processing

Particularly in primary school, good performance on copy tasks is an important working technique. With respect to writing skills, copying is a very basic process on which more complex writing abilities are based. We studied the copying ability of second and fourth graders across four types of symbols which vary with respect to their semantic and phonological characteristics: arbitrary graphical objects, unpronounceable consonant strings, numerals and meaningful text. Results show, in terms of average copying speed, significant effects of both factors: fourth graders performed generally faster than second graders, and for both class levels, the number of copied characters per time decreased from meaningful text to graphical objects, all pair-wise contrasts between symbol types being statistically significant. Moreover, a significant interaction shows that fourth graders improved more when copying symbols that form pronounceable chunks, namely meaningful text and numerical strings. This indicates an increasing role of phonological (and probably also semantic) processes involved in copying across primary school.     

Longitudinal relations between perceived autonomy support and basic need satisfaction in two student cohorts

The relation between autonomy support and basic need satisfaction was investigated by applying a longitudinal design at a time interval of two years, and by comparing two different grade level cohorts of students. Participants comprised 1.225 Norwegian students divided by two subsamples (6th and 8th grade level/8th and 10th grade level). The results showed stationary effects of autonomy support and basic need satisfaction, respectively, from Time 1 to Time 2. There was also evidence of a causal effect from T1 to T2 between autonomy support and basic need satisfaction, and reciprocal causation from basic need satisfaction T1 to autonomy support T2. These effects were grade level and gender specific. The present study provided support for longitudinal relations between autonomy support and basic need satisfaction. Autonomy support and basic need satisfaction are both antecedents to and consequences of themselves, also when measured at long term intervals.     

Policy and evidence: a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check in England

“This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), with special focus on the relationship between the UK Department for Education's policy‐making and the evidence considered in the process of developing and evaluating the PSC. The reports from the in‐house Standards and Testing Agency and from commissioned external organisations with limited remits have been analysed, with emphasis on how the screening check findings have been used in DfE decision‐making. My conclusion is that the department has overestimated both the validity and the reliability of the check: partly because important sources of measurement error have not been explored, and partly because the available evidence has not been analysed in sufficient depth — or perhaps simply been ignored by the department. The whole phonics screening check seems to be the product of policy‐based evidence, rather than evidence‐based policy‐making. This has, in my view, seriously undermined the value of the PSC as a screening instrument, and one must wonder whether it is ‘fit for purpose’.