From Screening to Improving Quality: The case of Latin America

Use of testing expanded in Latin America during the last 50 years from academic centres to policy makers and mass media. The expansion has been the result of the perseverance of many researchers and practitioners, cheaper and more user-friendly technol ogy, demands on labour and its ability to compete in a global market, and international comparisons showing the low adult functional literacy and poor performance of Latin American students. The first boost to testing was generated by the need for screening students for higher education. Later on there was a demand for identifying quality gaps causing repetition problems and low performance. In the 1980s a few countries used testing to assess alternative solutions and new ways to deliver teaching and managing classroom processes. By the mid-1990s a dozen countries were operating national testing systems. Recent tasks have been the identification of reading problems; the conducting of international compari sons; and the selection of effective models to raise quality. Even though only a few countries have taken full advantage of the whole set of possible uses of testing, there is a growing interest in using testing for raising students' achievement.     

Knowing in practice: re-conceptualising vocational expertise

The following re-conceptualisation of vocational expertise is premised on reconciling contributions from cognitive psychology with those from social and cultural theories of thinking and acting. Relations between the individuals acting and the social practice in which they act are proposed as bases for knowing and performance — knowing in practice. Domains of knowledge are held to be products of reciprocal and interpretative construction arising from individuals' engagement in social practice, rather than being abstracted disciplinary knowledge or disembedded sociocultural tools. The construction of the individuals' domains of vocational practice is constituted reciprocally through their participation at work. Some implications for curriculum are also proposed.     

Learning about the world of work: Co-opting school students’ paid work experiences

This paper proposes co-opting high school students’ paid part-time work experiences to develop their critical understanding of the world of work, beyond their schooling through post-school pathways. It argues that unlike work experience program or work placements organised through schools, students’ paid part-time employment provides authentic workplace experiences that have the potential to inform students deeply and critically about the world of work. These experiences include the reciprocal obligations that arise from paid employment and, as such, provide a rich base for high school students to explore the world of work, relationships in the workplace, what constitutes more and less valued work and how work is organised and rewarded. The co-opting of students’ work experiences for school-based activities may provide a useful base to explore the world of work both for those students who are employed part-time and those not employed in part-time work, but able to learn from their peers’ experiences. To assist achieving these goals some pedagogic tools are required to effectively describe, analyse and illuminate these experiences in classroom settings. A way of describing and critically appraising this paid work is proposed through individual and collective consideration of the activities and interactions that constitute students’ paid work experience. Given the difficulty of organising workplace placements and work experience programs, and the potentially richer outcomes, co-opting students’ paid work experiences presents a viable and worthwhile resource available in most classrooms for learning more about the world of work.     

Learning in the circumstances of practice

Learning in the circumstances of practice stands as the commonest and most enduring way occupational capacities have been learnt across human history, and, likely, are currently learnt. Yet, a comprehensive account of this means of learning remains absent, which limits the legitimacy of workplaces as sites of learning, the learning arising from them and understandings of how to organize, promote and evaluate that learning. When advancing this account, it is necessary to avoid being constrained by the discourse of schooling and orthodoxies of schooled societies, which can distort considerations of learning through practice on its own terms. When reviewed, anthropological and historical literature on learning occupational practices outside of educational provisions offers fresh suggestions including that such an account likely comprise elements of practice curriculum and pedagogies and personal epistemologies, albeit set within particular complexes of cultural, societal and situational factors. A key distinction arising from such a review is the emphasis on individuals’ active processes of learning and how these are enacted in the circumstances of practice, rather than on teaching or instruction. Such a distinction runs deep in this literature and has consequences for conceptions of understandings and efforts to promote and improve learning through practice.     

Personal epistemologies, work and learning

This paper elaborates the role and development of personal epistemologies when learning through and for work. It does this by drawing on explanatory propositions from psychology, sociology and philosophical accounts. The aim here is to go beyond conceptions of epistemological beliefs and to position personal epistemologies as being active, intentional, derived in personally particular ways through the unique set of socially derived experiences that comprise individuals’ life histories or ontogenies. In this way, they are held to be comprehensive and encompassing as a conception to explain individuals’ learning and as constructed through social experiences, albeit in person-specific ways. Given their active and constructive character, these epistemologies are placed centre stage in the dual processes of learning and remaking culturally derived practices, such as with paid work. These propositions are discussed and elaborated through a consideration of engagement and learning in forms of work that provide, respectively, relatively weak and rich forms of direct social guidance, and which require the enactment in different ways of individuals’ personal epistemologies in the conduct of and learning through paid work.     

The role of executive functions in the relation between socioeconomic level and the development of reading and maths skills / El rol de las funciones ejecutivas en la relación entre el nivel socioeconómico y el desarrollo de habilidades lectoras y matemáticas

Executive functions (EF) are a set of processes that allow individuals to plan, monitor and organize tasks and thus play a key role in the development of reading and maths skills. Environmental factors such as socioeconomic level (SEL) influence reading and maths skills as well as EFs. The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which executive functions play a mediating role between SEL and reading and maths performance. To this end, we assessed 286 Chilean primary education students: 86 with a high SEL and 200 with a low level. The results show that the high-SEL group obtained consistently higher scores than their peers with low SEL levels in both reading and maths tasks as well as in EF measurements. This suggests that SEL could influence the development of these variables. The results also showed that EFs partially mediate the relation between SEL and reading and maths skills in primary school students through the specific function of inhibition. The results are discussed in light of the effect of SEL on the development of EFs and school learning.     

Achievement in mathematics and language is linked to regular physical activity: a population study in Chilean youth

Abstract

We examined the association between the allocation of time to regular physical activity (PA) and achievement in mathematics and language in Chilean adolescents after controlling for confounders. In a random sample of 620 ninth graders (15.6 ± 0.7 years old), we measured regular PA, including physical education and sports extracurricular activities, and academic performance, using national standardised tests. Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses modelled the relation between academic and health-related behaviours. Sufficiency and proficiency in mathematics and language were used as outcome variables. Only 18% of adolescents had >4 h·week^–1 of regular PA. Devoting >4 h?·?week^–1 to regular PA significantly increased the odds of sufficiency and proficiency in both domains. After full adjustment, the odds of sufficiency and proficiency in mathematics increased by 1.9 (95% CI: 1.1–3.5) and 2.7 (95% CI: 1.7–4.3), respectively. Similarly, the odds of sufficiency and proficiency in language increased by 3.3 (95% CI: 1.7–9.7) and 2.6 (95% CI: 1.6–4.1), respectively. Adolescents with the highest allocation of time to regular PA performed much better in mathematics and language than inactive students. The academic benefits associated with PA can help to promote sustained behaviour changes regarding lifestyles. They can be more easily perceived as gains than health benefits alone.     

Social partnerships: Practices, paradoxes and prospects of Local Learning networks

This paper discusses the formation, character and contradictions of social partnerships. We report on a specific initiative, the Local Learning and Employment Networks (LLEN) established by the Victorian Government in Australia in 2001, documenting the nature of this initiative and how it is playing out. We draw attention to some of the tensions that exist between different agencies, including different agencies within government. Through this detailed case study it is possible to identify parallels between LLEN and other social partnership initiatives developing in other parts of the world. This process of situating a specific Australian partnership within the wider trend to social partnerships permits a more contextualised analysis. It shows the way social partnerships are developing as a consequence of education reform shaped by neo-liberal governance and various patterns of compliance and resistance to this political rationality.