L’Intégration de Nouvelles Connaissances: Entre Arithmétique et Algèbre

This study analyses students integration of new knowledge in the domain of elementary algebra, which is based on arithmetics, but differs from it in a number of ways. Subjects aged between 11 and 16 years were presented with a task which consisted in evaluating equivalence of either numerical or algebraic isomorphic expressions. The results indicate that the context plays an important role in determining the choice of a strategy of comparison. In evaluating algebric expressions, students use formal rules. The observed errors derive from over-generalisation of prototypical rules and their conditions of application. In the case of numerical expressions, the dominant strategies are re-writing procedures: these may or may not be followed by quantitative evaluations of the resulting expressions. Errors are less frequent, but our analyses show that the semantics of the procedures are not always well understood. In sum, students posses a fair amount of knowledge of various kinds, but this knowledge is not well integrated or interrelated. Hence their knowledge base is not very stable and can easily become deformed.     

An examination of US first-year teachers’ risk for occupational stress: associations with professional preparation and occupational health

Previous research has demonstrated associations between teacher stress and occupational burnout, but few studies have attempted to operationalize a central tenet of most stress theories, namely that teachers’ appraisals of their classroom demands vis-à-vis their classroom resources is a central driver of vulnerability to stress. The research is particularly silent on risk for stress among the most vulnerable workers in the education sector – first-year teachers. The current study, utilizing data from the US National Center for Education Statistics Beginning Teachers Longitudinal study, sought to replicate prior research, conducted with more experienced US teachers, demonstrating that perceptions of classroom demands and resources can be used to classify new teachers according to their risk for stress. In an extension to previous analyses, the current study also examined the association between first-year teachers’ risk for stress and professional preparation. Results from this study aligned with previous findings, teachers classified at risk for stress reported more burnout symptoms (d = 1.48) and less classroom control (d = .62). Teacher education characteristics and exposure to first-year support programming were also found to be associated with first-year teachers’ risk for stress classification. Findings have implications for how US teacher education potentially shapes first-year teachers’ appraisal of their working conditions and corresponding risk for stress.     

Scoping the barriers to implementing policies for inclusive education in Rwanda: an occupational therapy opportunity

Introduction: Education is a fundamental right for all children, including those with disability [UN (United Nations). 2013 UN (United Nations). 2013. General Assembly, 68th Session. The Way Forward: A Disability-Inclusive Developmental Agenda Towards 2015 and Beyond: Report of the Secretary-General (A/68/95). June 14. (Masthead). (2012 Readex microfiche). [Google Scholar]. General Assembly, 68th Session. The Way Forward: A Disability-Inclusive Developmental Agenda Towards 2015 and Beyond: Report of the Secretary-General (A/68/95). June 14. (Masthead). (2012 Readex microfiche).]. Rwanda has numerous policies for inclusive education but has not been successful in implementing these standards nationally. A multisectoral approach, including interdisciplinary liaisons, is cited to achieve inclusive education. Occupational therapy services recently introduced in Rwanda contribute to reducing obstacles and facilitating the transition of children with disabilities into mainstream classrooms. Overcoming the barriers to inclusive education requires first identifying them before solutions are postulated. Objectives: This research maps the literature to demystify the barriers to implementing national policies for inclusive education. Methods: A scoping approach guided by the Arksey and O'Malley [2005. “Scoping Studies: Towards a Methodological Framework.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 8: 19–32] five-stage methodological framework was employed. Results: Seven themes emerged that impede the adoption of inclusive education: financial constraints, physical barriers, insufficient teacher training, cultural attitudes and discrimination, over-reliance on foreign aid, inadequate policies and legislation and ignoring cultural context in policies. Future research: Using a multisectoral approach with occupational therapists, a strategic demonstration project is recommended to: (a) re-operationalise policies, (b) prepare the environment and community, (c) train teachers, and (d) evaluate outcomes. The findings have the potential to assist other regions in identifying challenges to, and adopting, inclusive education in the future.     

“I’m Going to Israel and All I Need to Pack Is My Imagination”: Pretend Trips to Israel in Jewish Early Childhood Education

ABSTRACT

This article examines the practice of pretend Israel trips in Jewish early childhood education. Jewish early childhood educators who work in markedly different preschool settings, and who have differing beliefs about Israel and Israel education, nonetheless converge on a practice of pretend trips to Israel that remains remarkably stable across settings. This article examines how and why these pretend trips have become part of the “grammar” of Jewish early childhood education, illuminating a practice that is simultaneously beloved and unsatisfying for Jewish early childhood educators who care about early childhood education and Israel education.     

Exploring learning goals and assessment approaches for Indigenous health education: a qualitative study in Australia and New Zealand

In higher education, assessment is key to student learning. Assessments which promote critical thinking necessary for sustained learning beyond university are highly valued. However, the design of assessment tasks to achieve these types of thinking skills and dispositions to act in professional practice has received little attention. This research examines how academics design assessment to achieve these learning goals in Indigenous health education. Indigenous health education is an important area of learning for health practitioners to help address worldwide patterns of health inequities that exist for Indigenous people. We used a constructivist qualitative methodology to (i) explore learning goals and assessment strategies used in Indigenous health tertiary education and (ii) examine how they relate to higher education assessment ideals. Forty-one academics (from nine health disciplines) involved in teaching Indigenous health content participated in a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis revealed learning goals to transform students’ perspectives and capacities to think critically and creatively about their role in Indigenous health. In contrast, assessment tasks encouraged more narrowly bounded thinking to analyse information about historical and socio-cultural factors contributing to Indigenous health. To transform students to be critical health practitioners capable of working and collaborating with Indigenous people to advance their health and well-being, the findings suggest that assessment may need to be nested across many aspects of the curriculum using a programmatic approach, and with a focus on learning to think and act for future practice. These findings accord with more recent calls for transformation of learning and assessment in health education.     

!Kung Infancy: The Social Context of Object Exploration

The present study consists of new analyses of systematic observations of Kung infants made by Konner during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our intent was to examine claims about the role of object sharing in development by describing how Kung infants develop interest in objects and how their caregivers act toward them when they are engaged in object-related acts. Results indicated that infants first displayed sustained interest in objects beginning at 4 months of age and that, beginning at about 8 months, they also began to engage in relational play and to give objects to others. Others tended to ignore infants during episodes of object manipulation and play, but moments of object offering were often socially embedded. These findings provide support for claims that there are universal changes in infants' involvement with objects and that their involvement is channeled in a culturally relevant manner by their caregivers.     

The ethics of aesthetics: Stigma,information, and the politics of electronic ankle monitor design

Abstract

At present, the politics of digital tools are predominantly discussed in terms of the data they collect, analyze, and circulate. Through my analysis of electronic ankle monitors’ visual characteristics, I widen the scope of investigation to consider how the visuality of digital tools’ form factor – the size and shape of computing hardware – also contributes to their politics. I discuss five major impacts the visuality of electronic ankle monitors’ physical form has upon their wearers’ lives: (1) lack of differentiation in the aesthetics of monitors across different types of wearers (spanning from criminal justice to immigration detention) leads wearers to be considered “dangerous criminals,” by default; (2) monitors limit wearers’ ability to “pass” in society; (3) monitors expand the set of surveillors beyond government officials to also include the public; (4) monitors compromise wearers’ privacy; (5) monitors associate wearers with older practices of visually marking people normative society has labeled dangerous. Based on this analysis, I argue two points. First, that the visuality of electronic ankle monitors’ form factor expands the harms wearers experience beyond those engendered by the device’s primary use as a remote geo-temporal tracking tool used by government organizations. Second, the case study of electronic ankle monitors evidences the need to develop laws and policies that seek to regulate the visual properties of digital tools as well as the data they generate.     

Rethinking Universal Suspension for Severe Student Behavior

Driven by a combination of concern for historically high suspension rates and substantial disproportionalities in suspension use, a recent wave of education reforms encourages schools to reduce their use of suspensions for student behavior management. Both academic and political discourse has focused on the extensive use of suspension for relatively minor behavioral infractions, with an implicit assumption or explicit articulation that suspension could still be used for severe infractions. This article tests that assumption, providing evidence that reductions in suspensions for severe infractions may produce positive impacts without harming school safety.

Using data from high schools in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), 2007–2014, we examine how declines in school reliance on suspensions for severe infractions are associated with changes in academic performance, attendance, and student reports of school climate for all students in the school. Recognizing the substantial methodological difficulty in obtaining impact estimates, we exploit a series of official and unofficial policy-induced changes to suspension practice, using school and student fixed effects models with extensive controls to reduce potential sources of bias in the estimates.

We find the reduction in out-of-school suspension for severe infractions was associated with small but statistically significant increases in student test scores, consequential attendance improvements (beyond the impact of fewer days suspended), and heterogeneity in changes to students' perceptions of school safety. Test score impacts are concentrated in racially diverse schools and those with low baseline suspension use. Attendance impacts are driven by schools predominantly serving African American students (which also had the highest baseline suspension rates); these schools also had large, significant improvements in perceptions of school climate.     

Threads of local continuity between centralized and decentralized causality: Transitional explanations for the behavior of a complex system

One line of research on student understanding of complex systems has tended to emphasize discontinuities between common misconceptions and relatively more sophisticated understandings. Other work has focused on instruction while acknowledging the existence of other ways of understanding complex systems, but less emphasis has been on examining the knowledge structures within these intermediate ways of understanding. This study takes a microgenetic approach to examining student’s explanations for the behavior of complex systems. Using the Knowledge-in-Pieces epistemological perspective, the analysis documents a continuity of reasoning patterns across less prototypically centralized and more prototypically decentralized (a more sophisticated causality) explanations while explaining the movement of sand dunes. The first analysis examines 31 interviews and shows that many reflected a general reasoning pattern that encompassing some combination of an initial centralized explanation, a final decentralized explanation, and transitional explanations. A second analysis examines a single student’s reasoning pattern and finds that the activation of relevant intuitive knowledge pieces (p-prims) and transitional explanations function as threads of continuity across the continuum of reasoning patterns. These findings suggest that students are able to exhibit a continuity of reasoning patterns across centralized to decentralized causality and are able to access productive intuitive knowledge about complex systems that are applicable to both the macro and micro levels of sand dune movement. Implications suggest that future research investigate these transitional explanations along with the mechanisms of shifting explanations that can account for this robust continuum.