How to improve reading comprehension in high-risk students: effects of class practices in Grade 5

This study investigated the effect of class practices on students’ learning gains in reading comprehension in the 5th grade. A sample of 4,344 students in 283 classes in 176 schools was studied. Several class practices that have previously been demonstrated to be effective were tested while controlling for student characteristics and socioeconomic and ethnic class composition. Differential effects were tested to identify class practices that can contribute to narrowing the achievement gap between high- and low-risk students. Most class practices turned out to have a similar effect for both low- and high-risk students. However, “discovery learning” and “well-organised and attractive instruction” appeared to be more beneficial for low-risk than for high-risk students. Group composition in terms of social and ethnic background turned out to have no significant effect on learning gains in reading comprehension.     

The posts continue: becoming

This paper describes assumptions of representational logic and phenomenology that organize much of Enlightenment humanism and one of its knowledge projects, conventional humanist qualitative methodology. The author argues that the ontological critiques of “post” theorists, including Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Deleuze and Guattari, were set aside in favor of epistemological projects following World War II and that, in general, the “posts” had little effect on that methodology. Those critiques are now being put to work and extended in the new empiricism and new materialism to re-imagine being, always an ethical task. Whether humanist qualitative inquiry can survive the ontological turn is a question to consider.     

A multidimensional model of school dropout from an 8-year longitudinal study in a general high school population

This study tests an empirical multidimensional model of school dropout, using data collected in the first year of an 8-year longitudinal study, with first year high school students aged 12–13 years. Structural equation modeling analyses show that five personal, family, and school latent factors together contribute to school dropout identified at 19 years of age: poor parent–teenager relationships, youth depression and family difficulties, negative classroom climate, negative school interactions, and poor academic achievement. This model increases our understanding of the dropout process in the general population and has direct implications for the development of high school dropout prevention programs.     

Agricultural Extension Services and Market Regulation: Learning from a Comparison of Six EU Countries

Abstract

If farmers are to meet the new challenges facing agriculture (environment, rural development, etc.), appropriate knowledge has to be produced. But observations in six EU countries (France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) show that unexpected problems arise when technical support for agriculture is linked to market regulation, as recommended since the late 1980s. The source of these problems can be understood better by applying concepts from the service economy: i) The production of new knowledge requires strong interaction between service providers (technical support bodies) and beneficiaries (farmers). The weakening of non-market regulation procedures, which partly guaranteed these possibilities of interaction, makes the conception of an advisory service difficult. ii) As soon as consultancy becomes a paying service, some beneficiaries reduce technical interaction with their colleagues in order to benefit from a productive advantage, and the ‘multipliable’ nature of new knowledge is reduced. iii) An increasing number of farmers are excluded from the benefits of technical support even though they help to provide services that society expects from agriculture (management of the land, maintenance of activities in low-density areas). iv) The responsibility for combining contradictory requirements (competitiveness, environment, rural development) is most often put on the shoulders of individual farmers who are unequipped to deal with such complex issues. Observed trends attest to the fact that effects often run counter to the stated agricultural and rural development objectives of policies.     

Constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and learners’ narratives: a study of mathematical and non‐mathematical subjectivities

In this paper, based on a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council considering how people position themselves in relation to popular representations of mathematics and mathematicians, we explore constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and the ways learners make meanings from these. Drawing on an analysis of popular cultural texts, we argue that popular discourses overwhelmingly construct mathematicians as white, heterosexual, middle‐class men, yet also construct them as ‘other’ through systems of binary oppositions between those doing and those not doing mathematics. Turning to the analysis of a corpus of 27 focus groups with school and university students in England and Wales, we explore how such images are deployed by learners. We argue that while learners’ views of mathematicians parallel in key ways popular discourses, they are not passively absorbing these as they are simultaneously aware of the clichéd nature of popular cultural images.     

The Training of Physical-Education Teachers in France and China: A Comparative Analysis of Curricula and Attitudes

This study in comparative physical education examines the curricula followed by physical-education teachers in China and France. It explores how theories of physical education and sport in each country have developed out of specific political, cultural and educational contexts, yet resulted in strong similarities in terms of the priority given to training programs. Nonetheless, it can be seen that the two curricula reflect genuinely divergent concepts of physical education influencing both theory and practice. The attitudes of Chinese and French teacher-trainers towards physical education and sport are shown to display significant ideological differences with regard to the meaning and educational import of these activities.     

Cognitive Profiles in Elementary Algebra: the PÉPITE Test Interface

The work presented here is part of a multidisciplinary project, called the PÉPITE project. Its aim is to set up a system to diagnose student profiles starting from a multidimensional analysis grid to evaluate their competences in elementary algebra. This paper deals with the design, the making and the evaluation of an interface in Computer Based Learning Environments. In it, we present the method adopted to set up software which proposes tasks to the students and collects data for the diagnosis module.We consider here the problems linked to the re-use of didactic know-how based on pencil-and-paper tasks and in particular how to transfer these tasks to a data processing environment. These problems are considered from the interface designer's point of view. In an attempt to make this clear, we make a distinction between ergonomic problems connected with the functioning of the interface and problems related to the field of application. © IFIP, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers     

CONNECTIONISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF KNOWLEDGE

Procedures for creating used by connectionist networks with hidden units are analyzed. With these networks it is possible to create by modification of the inputs, by modification of collector properties, by modification of connections between units and variation of thresholds of activation, by modification of constraints imposed on the network, by creation of new hidden units or by creation of new outputs. The interest of connectionist networks is in simulating various processes to allow analysis of modifications that are efficient and capable of concretizing the consequences of choices. Networks must be designed as tools capable of helping formalize problems, and not as replicas of cognitive processes.