ENTRE REPRODUCTION ET MOBILISATION: LES RAPPORTS DE GENRE EN FORMATION CONTINUE EN FRANCE ET AU CANADA

REPRODUCTION OR MOBILISATION? GENDER PROPORTIONS IN CONTINUING EDUCATION IN FRANCE AND CANADA – Initial education provisions for women have evolved greatly over the past 40 years. But what about their situation within adult education and training? This article, comparing Canada and France, shows that, while it is well known that more women than men participate in adult education, their greater presence in professional training courses is a new development. The analysis highlights certain particular findings, such as the growing demand for continuing education in Canada and the increased rate of participation by full-time employees in France. In both countries, a number of social factors continue to influence women’s participation.     

Teaching to address diverse learning needs: development and validation of a Differentiated Instruction Scale

In the province of Quebec, Canada, a trend towards full inclusion has impelled teachers to adapt their instruction to meet the needs of both advanced and weaker learners in regular school settings. The main purpose of the present investigation was to develop and validate the Differentiated Instruction Scale (DIS), which assesses the use of instructional adaptations and academic progress monitoring strategies in general education classrooms. A total of 125 elementary school teachers participated in a cross-sectional study, allowing us to develop and validate the DIS. Overall our results show that the DIS is composed of two factors that are consistent with the predicted constructs (instructional adaptations and academic progress monitoring). Evidence of convergent validity is provided through correlations among DIS' subscales and two criteria: (1) teachers' autonomy support and (2) perceptions of school climate. Results also reveal that teachers tend to use instructional adaptations that do not require much preparation or tailored instruction. The DIS could thus be used in future research to investigate outcomes of differentiated instruction. Moreover, it could provide useful information on optimal strategies for promoting learning in children with different abilities in general education classrooms.     

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.     

The French Baccalauréat Since 1985: Level of qualification or type of diploma?

The French government adopted a policy of raising the education level of young people following a vocational track in response to the growing problems this group was experiencing in entering the labour market. To achieve these ends, a new diploma was created, the 'bac professionnel'. In the French education system, the baccalauréat has traditionally operated as both a level of education and a social barrier. The baccalauréat thus offers its holders both the chance to follow higher-level studies and also access to middle and upper-middle class jobs. In creating a 'bac professionnel', the French government destroyed the barrier between the middle and the working classes and opened the university gates to young people who until then had been denied access. The effects of the policy have meant the 'massification' of higher education, but also a marked loss of clarity in the way upper levels of education and training are organised, and, at company level, the phenomenon of overqualified people in subordinate positions.     

Judgement and production of drawings by 3- to 10-year-olds: Comparison of declarative and procedural drawing knowledge

In this experiment, 80 children between the ages of three and ten produced and judged drawings of a person and a house. Two alternative hypotheses were tested. Under the first hypothesis, young children have internal models of persons and objects which are comparable to those of adults, but they have problems implementing their knowledge and planning and managing the graphic activity. If this hypothesis is true, we should obtain an interaction between age and type of task (production vs. judgement). Under the second hypothesis, children’s drawings are a direct reflection of their internal models of the items drawn. This hypothesis predicted a significant positive correlation between performance on production and judgement. In the judgement task, the subjects were presented with pairs of drawings and asked to indicate the more elaborate drawing. For the house and the man drawing, children by the age of three were able to correctly determine the most elaborated of the two presented drawings. A strong interaction was obtained between age and type of task (production or judgement), due to the fact that the difference between production performance and judgement performance decreases with age. The discussion suggests a limited cognitive capacity hypothesis to account for the results, and proposes some possibilities for future studies.     

Designing a self-improving tutor: PROTO-TEG

This paper presents the principles and the architecture of PROTO-TEG, a self-improving tutor in geometry. This system is able to discover criteria useful for selecting the didactic strategies it has at its disposal. These criteria are expressed as characteristics of the student model. They are elaborated by comparing student model states recorded when a strategy was effective and those recorded when the same strategy was not effective. This comparison is performed by machine learning methods, or, more precisely, by learning concepts from examples. An empirical experiment was performed in order to assess the self-improving functions; conditions were discovered for five of the nine didactic strategies. However, this new knowledge did not lead to PROTO-TEG being more efficient in terms of student performance.Some parts of this paper were presented at the ITS 88 Conference, in Montreal, June 1988; and other parts were presented at the second European seminar on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, in Le Mans (France), October 1988.