Creativity, Mathematizing, and Didactizing: Leen Streefland's work continues

This reaction to the papers in this PME Special Issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics draws a wider perspective on the issues addressed and some of the constructs used in research in Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). In particular, it tries to show that while the problems addressed existed within the world-wide arena of mathematics education and were not unique to the Dutch educational system, the methods used at the Freudenthal Institute to address them were uniquely adapted to that system yet foreshadowed developments in the wider field of mathematics education. The predictive aspects of mathematizing, didactizing, and guided reinvention, in which models-of become models-for on various levels, resonate with trends in mathematics education in recent years, including those promoted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in the USA. Research methodologies, too, have broadened to include more humanistic qualitative methods. Developmental research as epitomized in the RME tradition makes the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research obsolete, because there is no restriction on research methods that may be useful in investigating how to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics, and in the designing of mathematics curricula. Thus some aspects of this research resonate with what have come to be known as multitiered teaching experiments. However, in RME there is also a special content-oriented didactical approach that harmonizes with an emphasis on didactics (rather than pedagogy)in several other European countries. Some implications are drawn for future research directions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Executive function and language in deaf children

The relationship between language and executive function (EF) and their development in children have been the focus of recent debate and are of theoretical and clinical importance. Exploration of these functions in children with a peripheral hearing loss has the potential to be informative from both perspectives. This study compared the EF and language skills of 8- to 12-year-old children with cochlear implants (n = 22) and nonimplanted deaf children (n = 25) with those of age-matched hearing controls (n = 22). Implanted and nonimplanted deaf children performed below the level of hearing children on tests assessing oral receptive language, as well as on a number of EF tests, but no significant differences emerged between the implanted and nonimplanted deaf groups. Language ability was significantly positively associated with EF in both hearing and deaf children. Possible interpretations of these findings are suggested and the theoretical and clinical implications considered.     

Implications of Research on Effective Learning Environments for Initial Teacher Education

As a result of multi-disciplinary research on learning, a consistent and comprehensive body of knowledge on effective learning environments is currently emerging (OECD 2010). While this evidence is increasingly influencing the academic and policy discourse on the improvement and innovation of schools, its impact on the design principles of effective initial teacher education has been limited so far. In this paper, the seven transversal learning principles published in the 2010 OECD publication The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice serve as a framework for systematic reflections on how learning research on effective learning environments can inform initial teacher education and how the seven transversal learning principles can contribute to greater coherence and alignment in initial teacher education programs. We consider the implications of The Nature of Learning and other research on teacher education, alongside international examples of next practice, concluding that initial teacher education should model effective student learning.     

The relative impact of violation type and lie severity on judgments of message deceitfulness

This paper is part of a larger program of research assessing variables that underlie quantitative deceptiveness ratings. Several recent theoretical approaches, including Information Manipulation Theory (IMT), propose that deceptive messages are best understood as varying along two or more dimensions. At the same time, researchers have increasingly moved from dichotomous deception judgments to continuous deception ratings. This paper questions the validity of scaling degrees of deceptiveness along a single dimension, and argues that gradations in perceived deceptiveness reflect both the type of information manipulated and the severity of the consequences of the deception. This reasoning was tested with alxl experiment (N = 236) in which both the type of information manipulated and the severity of the consequences were systematically varied. As predicted, the results suggest that false messages (i.e., quality violations) are rated as more deceptive than lies of omission (i.e., quantity violations) when lie severity is low, but this difference diminishes as lie severity increases. In other words, false messages were rated as deceptive regardless of severity, but messages omitting information were rated as deceptive as false messages only when the consequences were serious. The implications for measuring deception are discussed.     

Students’ use of evaluative constructivism: comparative degrees of intentional learning

Evaluative constructivism is used to describe how students derived learning intentions and made choices about what they would do during a unit of work in a final-year high school biology class, as they conducted an inquiry into the social and ethical issues associated with cancer. The context of the study, theoretical background and overview of students’ awareness of their learning strengths and needs are related to the level of achievement in the essays they wrote. The case studies illustrate the diversity in the extent of knowledge and use of learning strategies and the implications this has for the level of support teachers can provide to enable students to be more self-directed. The concepts outlined here have very wide application to multiple learning contexts.