Eco-School in kindergartens: the effects,interpretation, and implementation of a pilot program

This study presents an analysis of a Czech pilot project in implementing the Eco-School program in kindergartens. The evaluation applied a mixed design that included pre/post testing of children using picture-based questionnaires, and interviews with the teachers responsible for conducting the program. The findings revealed a significant increase in the pro-environmental attitudes of the children (N = 419) between the pre-test and the post-test. The results of the qualitative part showed a broad spectrum of the ways in which the program was interpreted by the teachers (N = 16): while some teachers interpreted the program in a highly instrumental way, others interpreted it as emancipatory. Their different ways of interpreting the program led the teachers to different models of distribution of power between the adults and the children. Some of the teachers made the effort to establish a democratic participation of the children in setting the program agenda, but others manipulated the children to obtain their agreement with pre-selected activities. Although the study did not find any evidence that the instrumental implementation of the program would be less effective in promoting children’s attitude change, it showed differences in the interpretation of the merit of the program among the teachers.     

Service learning and intercultural citizenship in foreign-language education

Service Learning, a pedagogy combining formal learning with community service, has recently developed into Intercultural Service Learning (ISL). Intercultural Citizenship Education (ICE) combines foreign-language education and education for (intercultural) citizenship. They have different origins and applications but recent work in ISL is linked to foreign language education, as is ICE. A comparison of the two reveals considerable similarities and the potential for mutual enrichment. The article first explains the two types of education and their origins and theory, and examples of each are then provided. Thus the ways in which they complement each other and the potential for further coherence and enrichment are demonstrated. In particular it is argued that foreign language education can gain from the experience and rigour of ISL to give new possibilities for language teachers.     

Swiss Elementary School Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Forest Education

This article investigates benefits and challenges of forest education in view of 257 Swiss elementary school teachers (1st–3rd grade), by means of a written questionnaire and 15 in-depth interviews. Two thirds of the teachers carried out forest education during normal lesson hours (mean visits = eight per year). Forests were clearly considered as an educational setting, and especially suitable for the enhancement of personal and social skills. Setting rules was seen as indispensable for successful forest education and a must to communicate to “novice” teachers. Moreover, the didactic of forest education should be implemented in teacher education curricula.     

Two measures of the quality of group care for infants and toddlers

Two sets of quality measures of group care were used to assess their predictive power for two sets of measures of the development of infant and toddlers in group day care. One of the quality measures we investigated was the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS). We replicated the findings of Scarr, Eisenberg, & Dealer-Deckard (1994) which were that the total score of the ECERS represents a global index and that the 37 items making up the scale are redundant and could be shortened considerably without loss of the scale as a quality criterion of group care for young children. Neither Scarr, Eisenberg, and Dealer-Deckard (1994) nor our own Factor Analyses of the 37 items supported the a priori distinction of seven Subscales. However further findings indicate that regardless of the redundancy within ECERS, two Subscales, dealing mainly with adult-child, child-child and adult-adult interactions, predict the development of infants and toddlers, but only when the measures of development were based on participant observations of the children over a longer period of time and in the broad context of the natural daycare environment. None of the Subscales, nor the total ECERS predicted social development when it was based on precise time sampling observations, assessed by non participant observers, in interactions between a child and a specific caregiver. Such measures of development were well predicted in our study by caregiver behaviors assessed through Time Sampling Observations.     

Utilization of design principles for hybrid learning configurations by interprofessional design teams

Educational design research yields design knowledge, often in the form of design principles or guidelines that provide the rationale or ‘know-why’ for the design of educational interventions. As such, design principles can be utilized by designers in contexts other than the research context in which they were generated. Although research has shown that quality support is important for design success, less is known about processes that promote utilization of design principles as the rationale for instructional design. In this study we therefore explored an intervention for promoting the utilization of a set of research-based design principles in educational practice. This intervention aimed to promote utilization through enhancing perceived usefulness of the design principles by design teams in various contexts. The set of design principles that was utilized by the design teams in this study underpins the design of so-called hybrid learning configurations that are situated at the interface between school and workplace. The intervention was developed from the perspective of boundary crossing theory and was conducted with four different design teams. It was evaluated by way of a questionnaire and a dialogue with members of the design teams. This boundary crossing intervention appeared to bring about the desired outcomes. Most of the design team members considered the set of design principles useful in several different ways and they expected that utilization of the principles would lead to an improved learning configuration.     

Implementation eines wissenschaftlich erprobten,didaktischen Konzepts: Der Einfluss pädagogischer Autonomie auf die Wirksamkeit in der Praxis

There is growing interest in evidence-based interventions that can improve student teachers’ professional development. But how can these interventions be implemented into everyday teacher education practice by teacher educators themselves—without losing their initial, lab-tested effectiveness due to teacher educators’ practical educational autonomy? Through a quasi-experimental field study the following question is investigated: What is the impact of different degrees of educational autonomy (low/middle/high) that 19 teacher educa­tors are granted while implementing an experimentally proven concept into their teacher training courses on the development of the competence to diagnose classroom situations among 261 student teachers? ANCOVAs using planned contrasts indicate that the effectiveness of the concept can be sustained in ‘the real world’ of teacher education practice, even if practitioners—no longer researchers—are responsible for the concept realization; thereby, the highest increase in student teachers’ competence occurred when low educational autonomy was granted, i.e., the concept was implemented closely to the original.     

Injuries in football (soccer)—a systematic review of epidemiology and aetiological aspects

Increasing injury incidences prove the importance of injury prevention in football. The aim of this review was to summarise the recent evidence on the epidemiology and inciting events of acute injuries within subgroups (performance level, age and sex). A systematic literature search was conducted in the databases PubMed, CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane, PEDro, and SPORTDiscus for articles published from 1 January 2014 until 15 October 2017. The search yielded 4690 results. After the initial screening of titles and abstracts, 182 studies underwent detailed full-text screening according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Finally, 53 studies were included. Of these, 46 papers contained epidemiological data, with a total of approximately 41,212 observed player seasons and 11 further tournaments, including 7122.5 observed matches with approximately 126,748.5 player hours. A total of 30,844 injuries were identified. The overall injury incidence ranged from 0.6 to 20.3 injuries per 1000?h of exposure. The locations at highest risk of injury were the lower limbs, particularly the thighs, knees and ankles. Injury-inciting events were reported in 12 studies, involving a total of 8035 injuries. Of these 12 studies, 5 considered all body locations, 3 concentrated on anterior cruciate ligament injuries, 1 reported on general head injuries, 2 reported on concussions, and 1 reported on midfacial trauma only. One of the main findings of this review was that playing football does not necessarily imply a high risk of injury. Promising preventive approaches are being used to revise implementation strategies of evident training programmes and management of individual workloads.     

How To Get In?‐‐A Comparative Overview of Access to Higher Education

In many countries, the transition from “elite” to “mass” higher education has provided a strong stimulus for putting access high on the political agenda. The accessibility of nine western European countries is explored on the basis of the concepts of selectivity and affordability. The nine countries concerned display a degree of variation in terms of relative selectivity, ranging from those with strong entrance selection procedures, such as Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, to countries with an open system, such as Austria, Belgium (Flanders), and The Netherlands. In addition, there is a good deal of variation in the extent to which students can afford to attend higher education. In countries in which student support is predominantly given directly to the students through grants and loans, they are in a better position to meet their costs than in countries in which students are mainly subsidized with public support through their families     

Want that is understood well before say that,think that,and false belief: a test of de Villiers's linguistic determinism on German-speaking children

Two experiments with 79 monolingual German speaking children between 2.5 and 4.5 years showed a consistent developmental gap between children's memory/inference of what someone wanted and what someone wrongly said or thought. For instance, when John is still playing and mother says, "John should be going to bed," more than 70% answered correctly that mother wanted John to go to bed. However, when mother said, "John is going to bed," about 70% answered wrongly that she thought/said that he was still playing. Correct answers emerged with the mastery of the false-belief task. In German, want sentences (about something to happen) obligatorily take the same grammatical that complement as say or think sentences. Therefore, the observed gap constrains de Villier's (1995) linguistic determinism, which claims that acquisition of the necessary grammatical structures for talking about the mind drives children's ability to think about the mind.