French teachers' intentions to use accommodated materials in learning and assessment

The implementation of inclusive practices in mainstream education remains particularly difficult in the French context and is influenced by various factors including the types of disability labels, and the type of assessment practices that are used. Indeed, how student disability is labelled could impact teacher attitudes by notably disfavouring students labelled with autism. Moreover, normative assessment is strongly linked with selection at schools—a function that works against teacher attitudes towards inclusive education. This article reports on a study in which we examined teacher intentions to use materials accommodated to special educational needs students, as a function of special needs labelling. Specifically, this refers to the use of labels for either a disability or special educational need, in connection to tasks associated with learning or assessment. The results of our study revealed that, for both types of labels, the intentions to use accommodated materials are lower when teachers are asked to assess student competence than when prompted to teach this competence. These findings are discussed with consideration to the incompatibility between selection in schools—which is aligned with the principle of meritocracy—and efforts to promote inclusive education practices.     

Robust stabilization of nonlinear time delay systems: A complete type functionals approach

The robust stabilization of some classes of nonlinear delay systems with nominal linear delay system is addressed. The form of the controller is not an a priori proposal, but it is the result of a synthesis relying on the use of complete type Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals, leading to distributed delay linear or nonlinear robust control laws. Simulation results of the stabilization of a chemical refining process demonstrate the good performance of the proposed approaches.     

Small Circles: Mobile Telephony and the Cultivation of the Private Sphere

This article examines how we use mobile telephony to maintain our physically and socially closest social circle. The analysis is based on traffic data gathered from Norway using approximately 24 million calls and texts made by private individuals. Previous research has shown that our temporal and spatial movement is highly predictable and that the majority of calls and text messages are sent to only four to six different persons. This article extends this research by examining both tie strength and the distance between the interlocutors in urban and rural settings. The findings show that even as information and communication technologies (ICTs) potentially put the world at our fingertips, the mobile phone is an instrument of a more limited geographical and social sphere. Approximately two-thirds of our calls/texts go to strong ties that are within a 25-km radius.     

Change in Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence and Student Achievement: The Role of Intellectual Engagement

Intellectual engagement (IE) refers to enjoyment of intellectual activities and is proposed as causal for knowledge acquisition. The role of IE for cognitive development was examined utilizing 2‐year longitudinal data from 112 ninth graders (average baseline age: 14.7 years). Higher baseline IE predicted higher baseline crystallized ability but not changes therein, and was not associated with fluid ability. Furthermore, IE predicted change in school grades in language but not in mathematics grades or in standardized tests. These findings suggest that IE is not a major predictor of knowledge acquisition in adolescence, where degree of self‐determination in intellectual behaviors may be relatively limited. Open questions for future research are addressed, including reciprocal longitudinal associations between IE and academic and cognitive development.     

Teaching Ecosystems and Matter Cycles with Creative Drama Activities

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of creative drama-based instruction on seventh graders’ science achievements in the ecology and matter cycles unit and their attitudes toward science. The study is an experimental study carried out in one of the public elementary schools in Turkey during 2005–2006 schooling year. An ecological concept achievement test was developed and administered to 45 students in two classes (as control and experimental group) of an elementary school before and after the treatment. The experimental group received creative drama-based instruction and the control group received traditional instruction. A guiding instruction material which contains six lesson plans in the subject was constructed for the teacher to administer creative drama-based instruction. The topics of ecosystems and matter cycles were taught to the both of groups for 3 weeks. A science attitude test was administered to both groups before and after the treatment. The results revealed a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the both groups with respect to achievement in the ecology concepts and median of the attitudes toward science in favour of the experimental group after the treatment.     

信息技术环境下的语文教学与创造性思维的培养

论述了在信息技术环境下的语文教学如何培养学生创造性思维的有关问题。     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Dis</Emphasis>closive Ethics and Information Technology: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Disclosing Facial Recognition Systems</Emphasis>

This paper is an attempt to present disclosive ethics as a framework for computer and information ethics – in line with the suggestions by Brey, but also in quite a different manner. The potential of such an approach is demonstrated through a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems. The paper argues that the politics of information technology is a particularly powerful politics since information technology is an opaque technology – i.e. relatively closed to scrutiny. It presents the design of technology as a process of closure in which design and use decisions become black-boxed and progressively enclosed in increasingly complex socio-technical networks. It further argues for a disclosive ethics that aims to disclose the nondisclosure of politics by claiming a place for ethics in every actual operation of power – as manifested in actual design and use decisions and practices. It also proposes that disclosive ethics would aim to trace and disclose the intentional and emerging enclosure of politics from the very minute technical detail through to social practices and complex social-technical networks. The paper then proceeds to do a disclosive analysis of facial recognition systems. This analysis discloses that seemingly trivial biases in recognition rates of FRSs can emerge as very significant political acts when these systems become used in practice. Paper prepared for the Technology and Ethics Workshop at Twente