Mathematische Literalität unter einer sprachlich-kulturellen Perspektive

Im Beitrag werden zun?chst die verschiedenen in der mathematikdidaktischen Diskussion zu mathematical literacy vertretenen Positionen referiert sowie die Umsetzung von mathematical literacy als erkenntnisleitende Bildungskonzeption in der internationalen PISA-Studie sowie die Orientierung der deutschen Erg?nzungsstudie an dem Konzept einer mathematischen Grundbildung reflektiert. In einem zweiten Teil wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Anforderungen an eine Konzeption mathematischer Literalit?t zu stellen sind, die den Bedingungen einer mehrsprachigen Schülerschaft gerecht wird. An einem Beispiel aus der eigenen empirischen Forschung wird dabei die Notwendigkeit der Berücksichtigung sprachlicher Prozesse beim Mathematiklernen aufgezeigt. Anschlie?end werden auf dieser Basis überlegungen zu einer eigenen Auffassung mathematischer Literalit?t als Bildungsziel mathematischer Erziehung formuliert.     

Educating science teachers for sustainability: questions,contradictions and possibilities for rethinking learning and pedagogy

In this review, we explore what educating science teachers for sustainability implies according to the 23 book chapters and many sampled teacher education and science methods courses in the edited book by Susan Stratton, Rita Hagevick, Allan Feldman and Mark Bloom, entitled Educating Science Teachers for Sustainability, published in 2015 by Springer as part of the ASTE Series in Science Education. We situate the review in the current complex landscape of discourses around sustainability education, exploring its grounding in an anthropocentric ideology next to emancipatory practices and a holistic vision of the world. We offer a quick overview of the chapters and themes addressed. We then take up some ideas to think with. We are particularly invested in thinking about the implications of sustainability education as going beyond science teachers and science education, and as implying a serious engagement with and critique of current unsustainable ways of living. We play with the idea of taking sustainability education beyond neoliberal ideals of education and offer some suggestions by bringing in voices of students, youth, land-based learning and the idea of living sustainability. We also explore what indigenous scholars and epistemologies could have contributed to an exploration of sustainability education, a voice that was absent in the book, yet helps desettle the conversation and actions taken, moving the discourse beyond an Eurocentric grounding.     

Dearth of early education experience: a significant barrier to educational and social inclusion in the Western Balkans

The article summarises the socio-political, cultural, economic and educational background to the Western Balkans region and outlines the wider qualitative research study that provided the data on early and pre-school educational opportunities in the seven countries involved; Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo (under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244), the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The authors examine international research and literature on early education that identifies it as an important means of enabling subsequent educational and social inclusion and attainment. They proceed to discuss and illustrate from the research data five inter-linked factors showing that provision of early education in the Western Balkans is inadequate and exclusive and that children who are already at greatest socio-economic and cultural disadvantage and at potential risk in elementary and secondary education are least likely to participate in, or benefit from, it. Some recent more encouraging developments are noted but the article concludes that substantially more investment and positive actions are needed in raising awareness of the importance of early education and in developing policies and provision for it that will benefit children currently at greatest disadvantage.     

Flexibility of Suckler Cattle Farms in the Face of Uncertainty within the Beef Industry: A Proposed Definition and an Illustration

Abstract

The aim of this study, carried out in association with beef cattle producers, was to explore the capacity of farms to adapt, from a techno-conomic point of view, to both structural changes in consumer demand for beef products and market disruptions (sudden drop in beef consumption due partly to media coverage of bovine spongiform encephalopathy [BSE] and foot-and-mouth disease in the winter 2000/2001). The aim is to help farmers and advisors to find solutions to fit farmers’ management choices with their strategic objectives. The flexibility concept was adopted in order to examine how farms reacted to the winter 2000/2001 crisis, and was based on several technical, economic and sociological surveys. A series of variables was proposed and several hypotheses were formulated regarding their impact on farm flexibility. Four types of farm strategy were identified using different combinations of the degree of importance of these variables, with technical, economic and marketing flexibilities specific to each type. The results revealed the different combinations of flexibility-types possible (technical, economic, marketing) and explain why cattle farmers reacted as they did. Analysis of farm flexibility also revealed situations where these technical, economic and marketing flexibilities were either complementary or incompatible. For traditional livestock farmers, high flexibility (technical and economic) allowed them to minimize the impact of the crisis on their systems. In other cases, low flexibility either resulted in inertia, or led farmers to react by seeking solutions outside the cattle farming system. Development groups should take into account these parameters when interacting with farmers. We propose a framework to qualify the use of information resources by farmers, relative to their flexibility.     

Morphological Processing Before and During Children’s Spelling

ABSTRACT

Our understanding of spelling development has largely been gleaned from analysis of children’s accuracy at spelling words under varying conditions and the nature of their errors. Here, we consider whether handwriting durations can inform us about the time course with which children use morphological information to produce accurate spellings of root morphemes. Six- to 7-year-old (n = 23) and 8- to 11-year-old (n = 25) children produced 28 target spellings in a spelling-to-dictation task. Target words were matched quadruplets of base, control, inflected, and derived words beginning with the same letters (e.g., rock, rocket, rocking, rocky). Both groups of children showed evidence of morphological processing as they prepared their spelling; writing onset latencies were shorter for two-morpheme words than control words. The findings are consistent with statistical learning theories of spelling development and theories of lexical quality that include a role of morphology.     

Study on Multimedia CAI Authoring Systems

Abstract

Starting with a look back at most of our school days, this article considers the possible demise of the textbook as new technologies are introduced, but is by no means sure that this will come about. Certain conditions are needed if new technologies are to take their place alongside textbooks in the eyes of teachers.     

Rational Efficiency and Human Sensibility in Educational Reform: A Swedish Case Study in an Australian Framework 1

Elgqvist‐Saltzman, I. 1985. Rational Efficiency and Human Sensibility in Educational Reform: A Swedish Case Study in an Australian Framework. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 29, 123‐140. Swedish reform in higher education during 1950‐1980 is presented in a time‐line perspective. Different stages are discussed in relation to a technical, bureaucratic and social model of educational planning, using the Australian sociologist M. Pusey's conceptual framework. An evaluation approach with a life‐line methodology is presented as well as some results. From a woman's point of view, it seems that reforms have not been able to match rational efficiency with human sensibility in the way predicted by the Australian historian W.F. Conell in his review of the period of educational reconstruction and expansion.

     

Sport,Technique and Violence: The Technical Modes for Generating Sport Violence

Norbert Elias makes technical progress one of the markers of the state of civilisation. It is from this viewpoint that we would like to return to the question of sport, a fundamental part in Elias' civilising process, which also constitutes, a contrario, one of the most ambiguous aspects of ‘technical progress’ and its relation to violence, to the articulation of a double abuse of instrumental rationality. On the one hand the infinite improvement of human possibilities (records, performance) which leads to the recognised risks of exploitation and the ultra-sophisticated controlling of athletes (extreme pressure, over-training) as a corollary of the temptation to over-stimulate athletic potential as a result of the uncontrolled use of victory techniques (cheating, doping, violence). On the other hand, the stakes involved in the production of a vast spectacle with ideological, sociopolitical and socio-economic overtones which lead to technological manipulations. Both these tendencies overlap, and furthermore cannot be isolated from, a more general context of the technification of the social, at the heart of which instrumental rationality constitutes the first example of violence. This three-fold observation constitutes the basis of the argument set out in this paper.