Ordering and structuring ideas in text: From conceptual organization to linguistic formulation

The goal of this study was to analyze the development of the relationship between conceptual and linguistic processes as regards idea ordering and structuring (linearizing), when composing a text. Participants (from 7^th graders to University students) were required to compose a text using a list of eleven scrambled ideas. Conceptual rules allow to a priori determine an optimal ordering of these ideas. Results showed a significant increase, with grade level, in the establishment of the postulated conceptual order, and in the linguistic elaboration of the text structure. A large autonomy was observed between conceptual and linguistic processes. The discussion considers the following points: The relevance of the notion of text optimal order; the unequal development with grade level of the varied linguistic skills; the dissymmetry in conceptual-linguistic relationships; the usefulness of the experimental paradigm; some consequences for education.     

SAFE Homes: is it worth the cost? An evaluation of a group home permanency planning program for children who first enter out-of-home care

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the SAFE Homes (SH) program, a short-term group care program for children between 3 and 12 years of age who enter care for the first time. The program aims to improve case outcomes by consolidating resources to facilitate assessment and treatment planning. METHODS: The 1-year outcomes of 342 children who received SAFE Home services and 342 matched foster care (FC) control children were compared. The 684 subjects used in this report were selected from a larger pool of 909 subjects using propensity score matching to control for hidden bias in treatment group assignment. We hypothesized that SAFE Homes would result in greater continuity of care for children (e.g., fewer placements, more placements with siblings and in towns of origin), identification of more relatives for substitute care when needed, reduced use of high-cost restrictive care settings (e.g., residential, inpatient), and reduced rates of re-abuse through earlier detection and provision of services to meet child and family treatment needs. RESULTS: Prior to the initiation of the SAFE Homes program, 75% of the children who entered care in the State experienced three or more placements in the first year. The outcomes of both the SH and FC cases were significantly improved over pre-SAFE Home State statistics. The FC group, however, had comparable or better outcomes on most variables examined. In addition, the total cost for out-of-home care for the children in FC was significantly less, despite the fact that the two groups spent similar amounts of time in care (average time in care: 7 months). This finding held when the total placement cost was calculated using the State reimbursement rate of 206.00 US dollars per day for SAFE Home care (SH: 20,851 US dollars +/- 24,231 US dollars; FC: 8,441 US dollars +/- 21,126 US dollars, p < .001), and a conservative SAFE Home program fee of 85.00 US dollars per day that only considered the child care and custodial staffing costs uniquely associated with the program (SH: 13,314 US dollars +/- 21,718 US dollars; FC: 8,441 US dollars +/-21,126 US dollars, p < .001). CONCLUSION: Improvements in outcomes related to continuity of care can be attained through staff training. The SAFE Home model of care is not cost-effective for first-time placements.     

Learner engagement in MOOCs: Scale development and validation

The purpose of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of conceptualising and measuring learner engagement in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The paper develops and validates a MOOC engagement scale (MES) to measure learner engagement. The initial questionnaire items of the scale were developed by reviewing existing related literature and validated student engagement constructs. This was followed by a modified scale development process, including two focus group interviews (n = 10), an exploratory survey (n = 12), an expert review (n = 10), a pilot survey (n = 15), an item purification study (n = 590) and a construct validation study (n = 303). The final version of the scale is made up of four dimensions: behavioural engagement, cognitive engagement, emotional engagement and social engagement. The paper concludes with recommendations for how the MES can be used to assess the pattern of engagement in MOOCs and to investigate the relationship between learner engagement and other important MOOC teaching and learning factors.     

A cross-case analysis of three Native Science Field Centers

Native Science Field Centers (NSFCs) were created to engage youth and adults in environmental science activities through the integration of traditional Native ways of knowing (understanding about the natural world based on centuries of observation including philosophy, worldview, cosmology, and belief systems of Indigenous peoples), Native languages, and Western science concepts. This paper focuses on the Blackfeet Native Science Field Center, the Lakota Native Science Field Center, and the Wind River Native Science Field Center. One of the long-term, overarching goals of these NSFCs was to stimulate the interest of Native American students in ways that encouraged them to pursue academic and career paths in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. A great deal can be learned from the experiences of the NSFCs in terms of effective educational strategies, as well as advantages and challenges in blending Native ways of knowing and Western scientific knowledge in an informal science education setting. Hopa Mountain—a Bozeman, Montana-based nonprofit—partnered with the Blackfeet Community College on the Blackfeet Reservation, Fremont County School District #21 on the Wind River Reservation, and Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation to cooperatively establish the Native Science Field Centers. This paper presents a profile of each NSFC and highlights their program components and accomplishments.     

Evidence of repeated access to immediate verbal memory during handwriting

Writing is a relatively slow process. A certain degree of overlapping must therefore be assumed to exist between motor activities and more «central» processes involved in the production of language. The present experiment was based on the assumption that these management processes must leave some traces at the level of execution. Subjects were asked to read and memorize a sequence of three words (examples: «parachute parapluie paramètre», «taximètre décimètre paramètre»); and write them down on a graphic tablet. The results are consistent with the following ideas:

1. the same motor program was used for the three occurrences of repeated morphemes
2. Non-repeated morphemes were recovered from verbal memory while the preceding repeated morpheme was being written.

     

L'evolution des chances d'acces a l'enseignement superieur en France (1962–1966)

The article presents the final conclusions of a series of studies (secondary analyses of statistical data and investigations) carried out by the Centre de Sociologie Européenne between 1964 and 1967 and re-evaluated in the light of the new trends which emerged after 1968 (more open system of education offset by diversification of schemes of study with unequal returns in terms of career openings or prestige). In order to present the problem of the democratisation of higher education by reference to unambiguous data, the authors propose a simple principle for calculating the opportunities for entry to a given level of instruction, or into a given field, as a function of social origin and sex. This systematic method of measuring inequality of academic opportunity, linked to sociological variables, has (a) technical (b) methodological and (c) theoretical advantages.o li](a) From the technical point of view, this calculation which relates the number of students (of a given level) possessing certain social characteristics with the cohort of young people of the same age possessing the same social characteristics, makes it possible to eliminate the ambiguities and statistical fallacies of most analyses of the democratisation of education, which are confined to a comparison of the percentages (or the change over time of the percentages) of different social categories represented within the student population, without taking account of the numerical representation (and the change over time of the numerical representation) of these same categories in the active population. li](b) From the methodological point of view, one has thus at one's disposal an indisputable method of presenting unambiguous conclusions with regard to the chronological development of academic inequalities for a given country, or with regard to international comparisons. li](c) From the theoretical viewpoint, this method translates into statistical terms a principle of sociological theory of much more general application and one which is exemplified in the article; this principle, which might be termed structuralist, states that no value (quantitative or qualitative) should be appraised in itself and for itself, rather that it must always be evaluated in its operational or transformational context by taking into account its positional value in the whole system of relations which link it to other values.By applying this principle, it becomes clear that the sciences are not, in France, more democratic than other fields of study, as is asserted by some authors who are content to compare the percentage of working-class students in the science faculties with the percentage achieved in the other faculties, without relating this rate to the extremely low one for working-class students in the Grandes Écoles scientifiques (the École Polytechnique, etc.): in fact, making such a comparison would highlight the weak positional value of scientific subjects in universities in the total system of scientific institutions of higher education and it would reveal the function of relegation (or reduced acceptance) of children from lower-class families assumed by the science faculties in a system dominated by the Grandes Écoles.On a more general level, this principle of relational intelligibility guides the authors' interpretation of opportunity for entry to higher education in France from 1962 to 1966. During this period, the structure of academic inequalities which in 1962 ranged from one chance in 100 (for the least favoured category) to 50 chances in 100 (for the most highly favoured category) has moved upwards, since, in 1966, the range of opportunities extends roughly from 2% to more than 70%. In other words, the total increase in the rate of enrolment in higher education of 18 to 21 year olds has been distributed, grosso modo, between the different social categories in proportion to existing inequalities. Despite a slight statistical narrowing of this range, the authors' psychosociological analysis attempts to show that the general system of expectations and attitudes of different social classes vis-à-vis the University cannot have been modified by a change which amounts to an upward translation of the structure of inequalities. It is therefore concluded that the policy of increasing enrolment during this period had an almost zero effect (sociologically speaking) on the phenomenon of the democratisation of the university, defined as a process equalising the academic opportunities of different social categories.Again it is the same principle, applied to the analysis of the relative scarcity of academic qualifications, which makes it possible to demonstrate that the expansion of higher education devalues degrees (both in the job market and in the symbolic prestige market) as it democratises them, thus reconstructing again at a higher level, or in fields of study yielding high returns, the academic privileges of the favoured classes.     

Analyse des Facteurs de Réussite de l'Implantation d'une Innovation Scolaire

School innovating involves risks for teachers; professional risks, but also personal risks. So, the implantation and the diffusion of schools innovations are only possible if certain facilitating conditions are fulfilled.

Considering a specific innovation developed for 15 years in Belgium (peer‐tutoring), the authors are trying to answer the following questions: ? What conditions have to be fulfilled for an innovation to take shape and to expand?

? What are the most important factors which determine the success or the failure of an innovation?

? Even though the effects on pupils remain the justification of an innovation, how can we take into account the questions the teachers ask themselves at the different stages of the innovation? What are those questions? How can all the actors of the project find what they expected?

     

Structures of argumentative discourse: Effects of type of referential space

Written argumentative texts were collected from 7 to 14 year-old-children in two situations: one in which a scientific-like issue was to be debated (formal discourse: FD) and one in which an opinion was to be defended (natural discourse: ND). The structure of the supporting arguments advanced in the individual protocols were analyzed. Various structural indices were defined and calculated for each protocol, and then input into a factorial correspondence analysis. In both the FD and ND conditions, the main factorial axis opposes long protocols to short ones. This finding held true even though the other indices were weighted to compensate for protocol length. The length variable thus appears to be a discourse characteristic as such. Furthermore, long FD protocols were associated with embedded structures and a substantial amount of rewording. Long ND protocols had a low degree of embedding, and contained many accumulated arguments and thematic breaks. The second axis opposes sequential chaining of arguments to argument coordination in FD. In ND, it opposes the absence of structure and many rewordings to a variety of more or less highly organized structures, but without sequential chaining. These analyses revealed some interesting differences between formal and natural discourse: the key role played by sequential chaining in FD versus the insignificance of this type of structure in ND, and the important but different role of rewording in FD and ND. Protocol length was found to be strongly linked to subject age: older subjects have more arguments at their disposal. But in addition to acquiring the ability to write longer texts, older children are able to use different structures for argumentation, depending on the type of referential space involved.