Boys’ and girls’ conversational participation across four grade levels in Norwegian classrooms: taking the floor or being given the floor?

The participation of girls and boys in teacher‐led classroom conversations in Norway was examined across four grade levels (first, third, sixth and ninth). Boys participated more across all grade levels. The difference in girls’ and boys’ participation was least in the first grade and greatest in the ninth grade. A greater proportion of the girls’ utterances was initiated by the teacher allocating turns. The boys had more overlapping utterances with the teacher and contributed more comments that were not invited by the teacher. The difference in girls’ and boys’ participation was less in a classroom with a female rather than a male teacher. Boys made many uninvited comments in classrooms with male teachers. The discussion draws attention to relationships between conversation participation and learning, between participation and influence, and between participation and developing skills to take the floor in public.     

Enabling skills in early reading acquisition: A study of children in Latvian kindergartens

Preschool children in Latvia were tested in order to examine the relationships among various enabling skills and early reading performance. A principal component analysis indicated three factors: a phonemic awareness factor, a naming factor, and a short-term memory factor. Multiple regression analyses with word identification and sentence comprehension as dependent variables yielded further support to the powerful role played by phonemic awareness in explaining variance in both these aspects of reading. Unexpectedly, neither naming nor short-term memory contributed to explain unique variance in word and sentence reading. The Latvian orthography is very consistent, and our results provide further evidence to the importance of phonemic awareness in early reading acquisition especially in a transparent language. Therefore, the tasks used when assessing phonemic awareness can be very useful when screening children at risk for developing reading problems. Enhancing children's letter knowledge and phonemic awareness skills should be a priority goal in the kindergarten classroom.     

David Beckham’s re-invention of the winger

It seems David Beckham is destined to be judged more according to his celebrity status than to his soccer skills. Even as a soccer player occupying one of the most mythic positions on the pitch, the winger, Beckham has constantly fallen short to the inevitable (but also unfair) comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo, Ryan Giggs, Luis Figo and even earlier prototypes such as George Best or Raymond Kopa, whose basic qualities consisted in dribbling, speed and goal line crosses. The problem with these comparisons is that Beckham, at the outset, is categorized as a winger when he in fact was, initially, a central midfielder. However, because Beckham brings along some of the virtues as a central midfielder – passing skills and combative tackling – when he migrates from the centre of the field to the right, he is able to invent a completely new type of winger. Overall speaking, Beckham fuses a Bergsonian epic quality of durée and accumulating presence with a Nietzschean lyric quality of unexpectedness and abruptness. More specifically, what sets Beckham apart and secures him a seat in the Pantheon of soccer’s great innovators are timing (‘early on and unexpectedly’), sense of spacing (‘halfway’) and the fusion of Euclid and Einstein (‘curled crosses with extreme precision’).     

Gender differences in student performance in large lecture classrooms using personal response systems (‘clickers’) with narrative case studies

This study investigated gender differences in science learning between two pedagogical approaches: traditional lecture and narrative case studies using personal response systems (‘clickers’). Thirteen instructors of introductory biology classes at 12 different institutions across the USA and Canada used two types of pedagogy (Clicker Cases and traditional lecture) to teach eight topic areas. Three different sets of multiple regression analysis were conducted for three separate dependent variables: posttest score, change in score from posttest to final, and transfer score. Interactions between gender and pedagogical approach were found across the three analyses. Women either performed better with Clicker Cases, or about the same with either instructional method, but men performed markedly better with lectures in most topic areas. Our results suggest that men and women experience two pedagogical approaches—Clicker Cases and lectures—differently, and that Clicker Cases are more favorable for women than for men.     

Numerical estimation in adults with and without developmental dyscalculia

It has been hypothesized that developmental dyscalculia (DD) is either due to a defect of the approximate number system (ANS) or to an impaired access between that system and symbolic numbers. Several studies have tested these two hypotheses in children with DD but none has dealt with adults who had experienced DD as children.This study aimed to compare these two hypotheses in an adult population in order to investigate which deficits still persist at that age. To that aim, numerical estimation tasks were given to adults who had or had not experienced DD as a child. Three of the estimation tasks required a mapping between the ANS and symbolic numbers: participants had to estimate the number of same or different-sized dots presented by producing the corresponding Arabic number or, conversely, to produce the number of dots corresponding to a presented Arabic number. A fourth task did not require any processing of symbolic numbers; participants had to produce a collection of dots of the same numerosity as another one previously presented.Consistently, in all the four numerical tasks and irrespective of whether the tasks used symbolic numbers or not, the estimates of DD participants were less accurate than those of the control participants. These results indicate that adults who had experienced DD as children continue to demonstrate a less precise magnitude representation.     

Teachers’ potential to promote students’ deeper learning in whole-class teaching: An observation study in Norwegian classrooms

Journal of Educational Change - Teachers worldwide are challenged to adjust their teaching to meet students’ needs for deeper learning. The lack of mutual understanding among researchers,...     

Representations of student performance data in local education policy

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - The use of data for governance purposes has been widely recognised as a way for national authorities to coordinate their activities across...     

Correction to: Teaching and learning in a multilingual Europe: findings from a cross-European study

European Journal of Psychology of Education - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-021-00539-z