Do migrant girls perform better than migrant boys? Deviant gender differences between the reading scores of 15-year-old children of migrants compared to native pupils

In this paper, we analyse the gender differences between the educational performance of 15-year-old children of migrants from specific regions of origin countries living in different destination countries with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 wave. We study whether this gender difference of migrant pupils deviates from the gender difference between the native pupils in their destination country. We analyse the educational performance of 16,612 daughters and 16,804 sons of migrants in destination countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania. We distinguish 62 origin countries and 12 origin areas in 30 destination countries. Female migrant pupils have both higher reading and math scores than comparable male migrant pupils, and these gender differences among migrant pupils are larger than among comparable native pupils. Parental socioeconomic background has an equal effect on the educational performance of daughters of migrants and on that of sons of migrants. The variation in educational performance by region of origin is, however, not clearly related to the poverty or traditionalism of regions.     

Ethnic composition of the class and educational performance in primary education in The Netherlands

This article examines the effect of the ethnic composition in the school class on school performance in primary education, using COOL 2008 data for The Netherlands. We make an important distinction between the proportion of migrant children and the diversity with regard to the different ethnic groups in a school class. Due to the strong correlation between these 2 variables, we employ a residualized score of diversity on the proportion of migrants. The diversity indicator, which indicates the level of diversity given a particular share of migrant children, is negatively related to reading comprehension in Grade 8. For other grade years, we find little support for negative effects of diversity net of the share of migrants in a class.     

Guiding classroom discussions for democratic citizenship education

Classroom discussion is frequently proposes as an essential part of democratic citizenship education. Literature, however, pays little attention to what kind of discussion is most effective and how teachers can facilitate a discussion. This study aims to contribute to the development of a framework for analysing the characteristics of classroom discussions and the different roles teachers can adopt in guiding a discussion on controversial issues. In addition, we investigated how the way teachers guide the discussion is related to the structure and content features of the discussion. The framework was used to analyse five classroom discussions in secondary education. Our framework appeared to be useful for revealing differences in the structure and content features of the classroom discussions and in the way teachers guide the discussion. The results also indicated that a high degree of teacher regulation was related to high content quality and more participation from students. A high degree of student regulation was linked to more genuine discussion among students. The study underlines the importance of taking account of the teacher’s role in research into the effectiveness of classroom discussions for democratic citizenship education and the study makes useful suggestions for teachers when preparing for a classroom discussion.     

Research on Teacher Thinking and Implications for Teacher Training

In teacher training it is necessary to take into account the practical knowledge student teachers have about teaching. Student teachers should have the opportunity of integrating theories that are being taught with their own practical knowledge. This can only happen if the student teacher recognises the theories as being relevant to their teaching practice. To facilitate and stimulate such an integration process, teacher trainers need to have insight in the content and the development of the practical knowledge of teaching. This content and development will be described and there will be given some implications for teacher training.     

Teacher education in schools: an international comparison

Learning at the workplace is an important development in teacher education in secondary education. In this study we look at the school‐linked models for teacher education that exist in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. The characteristics of these models and their possible consequences for the quality of teachers are investigated. We observed among others a substantial variation between countries on matters of integration between the institution and the school, the emphasis on academic or practical training, embedding of teacher education and duration of teacher education.

La formation en alternance constitue un point culminant au sein des Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres. Dans le cadre de cette recherche, nous avons voulu examiner quelques modèles de formation dans un certain nombre de pays de l'Union Européenne, en l'occurrence, la France, l'Allemagne, le Royaume‐Uni, les Pays‐Bas et la Suède. Ce travail porte sur les caractéristiques de ces modèles et leur impact sur la qualification professionnelle des Maîtres. Force est de constater des différences substantielles entre ces pays en ce qui concerne le degré d'intégration entre les Instituts et les établissements scolaires, l'articulation pratique‐théorie, la validation de la formation, la titularisation et, enfin, la durée de la formation.

En la formación (universitaria) de los profesores se ve un desarrollo importante: el aprendizaje por el futuro profesor (participando) en el centro escolar. En el cuadro de esta investigación examinamos algunos modelos para la participación de los centros de formación de los profesores en los institutos escolares, en los países Francia, Alemania, el Reino Unido, Holanda y Suecia. Se han analizado las características de estos modelos y sus posibles consecuencias para la calidad profesional de los profesores. Comprobamos e.o. que existen diferencias destacantes entre los países mencionados en cuanto al grado de integración entre los centros de formación de profesores y los institutos escolares, el enfásis en la formación práctica o contrariamente en la formación teórica de los futuros profesores, los métodos de examinación y la validación y la duración de la formación del profesor.

Lernen am Arbeitsplatz ist eine bedeutsame Entwicklung in der Lehrerausbildung. In dieser Untersuchung betrachten wir Modelle für das berufliche Lernen in der Schule in Frankreich, Deutschland, Großbrittannien, den Niederlanden und Schweden. Untersucht wurden die Merkmale dieser Modelle und die möglichen Konsequenzen für die Qualität von Lehrern. Wir stellen unter anderem wesentliche Differenzen zwischen den Nationen fest im Grad der Integration zwischen Ausbildungsinstitution und Schule, in der Gewichtung der akademischen gegenüber der praktischen Ausbildung, in den Prüfungsmethoden und in der Dauer der Lehrerausbildung.     

Monitoring School Effectiveness in Developing Countries

Reviews on school effectiveness research in developing countries indicate that between-school variances are much larger than in industrialized countries. Resource input factors appear to have a larger impact in developing countries, while there are relatively few studies that have focused on instructional processes. Results at this level are not very clear at this stage. Local contexts may shape and interact with conditions that are expected to enhance effectiveness. Given the high stakes that are involved and the degrees of existing variation, school effectiveness studies in developing countries have the potential to be at the cutting edge of empirical school effectiveness research in the near future. Integration and application of the knowledge-base in evaluation and monitoring projects by means of school process indicators is seen as the most responsible way to use the research findings for improvement purposes.     

Basic School Effectiveness Research: Items for a Research Agenda 1

Reviewers of the school effectiveness literature rarely forget to mention the importance of the formation of theory. Yet, the actual practice of school effectiveness research is rather atheoretical. In this article two types of studies are discussed that may strengthen the conceptual and theoretical basis of school effectiveness research: foundational studies, aimed at resolving basic conceptual questions regarding the construct of school effectiveness and fundamental studies aimed at the development and testing of school effectiveness models using available theories from the social sciences.

A list of concrete items for the school effectiveness research agenda is the result of this exploration of conceptual and theoretical issues.

     

Monolingual Document Retrieval for European Languages

Recent years have witnessed considerable advances in information retrieval for European languages other than English. We give an overview of commonly used techniques and we analyze them with respect to their impact on retrieval effectiveness. The techniques considered range from linguistically motivated techniques, such as morphological normalization and compound splitting, to knowledge-free approaches, such as n-gram indexing. Evaluations are carried out against data from the CLEF campaign, covering eight European languages. Our results show that for many of these languages a modicum of linguistic techniques may lead to improvements in retrieval effectiveness, as can the use of language independent techniques.     

Clear Self,Better Relationships: Adolescents’ Self‐Concept Clarity and Relationship Quality With Parents and Peers Across 5 Years

This study examined reciprocal associations between adolescents’ self‐concept clarity (SCC) and their relationship quality with parents and best friends in a five‐wave longitudinal study from age 13 to 18 years. In all, 497 adolescents (57% boys) reported on their SCC and all informants (i.e., adolescents, both parents, and adolescents’ best friends) reported on support and negative interaction. Within‐person cross‐lagged analyses provided systematic evidence for both parent effects and child effects, with the direction of effects being strongly dependent on the relational context. For example, higher maternal support predicted higher adolescent SCC, supporting a parent effects perspective, whereas higher SCC predicted lower paternal negative interaction, supporting a child effects perspective. Peer effects on adolescent SCC were not consistently found across adolescent and best friend reports.