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.     

An integrated approach for modeling and solving the scheduling problem of container handling systems

INTRODUCTION Worldwide container trade has grown 9.5% per year last decade and will continue to do so at an 8% growth rate in the coming years (James et al., 1997), so container terminals have to handle containers more efficiently. Fig.1 shows a typical container terminal layout composed of “Quayside area” and “Storage yard”. Many optimization problems associated with a container terminal have been extensively studied in the past few years. Vis and De Koster (2003) gave a comprehens…     

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.     

The well‐being of teachers in Flanders: the importance of a supportive school culture

Research on the well‐being of teachers was conducted at the request of the Department of Education in Flanders, Belgium. The goals were: (1) to construct an instrument for the Education Inspectorate; and (2) to conduct a survey in order to identify school‐related conditions relevant for teachers’ professional well‐being. Based on literature and panel discussions with teachers and principals, a questionnaire was constructed, tested and subdivided in subscales following a factor analysis. The questionnaire was administered to a representative sample of elementary (covering both nursery and primary schools, children aged 3–12) and secondary school teachers. A multilevel analysis reveals how differences in scores can be explained at school level.     

Making sense of the glass ceiling in schools: an exploration of women teachers’ discourses

There is extensive evidence of a ‘glass ceiling’ for women across the labour market. Though schools have widely been described as ‘feminized’ work environments, the under‐representation of women at school management level is well established. Based on a study of women teachers’ careers and promotion in the English school sector (in early years, primary and secondary schools), this paper draws on a critical discourse analysis of 44 individual interviews conducted with women teachers to explore their views of the ‘glass ceiling’. Despite significant evidence of the barriers to management positions faced by women teachers, interpretative frameworks drawing on discourses of individualization and personal choice are most prominent among these to make sense of the low proportion of women in school management. However, the paper also identifies the existence of alternative discourses recognizing the existence of gender inequalities.     

The Neuroscience of Art: A Research Program for the Next Decade?

Works of art can be viewed as elements of a human‐specific nonverbal communication system, distinct from language. First, the cognitive abilities and skills required for art creation and perception are built from a cascade of events driven by a “genetic envelope”. Essential for the understanding of artistic creation is its epigenetic variability. Second, artistic contemplation and creation may be tentatively viewed as a discrete and singular conscious synthesis taking place within the personal global neuronal workspace of external perceptions, internal memories and stored emotions. Third, there is a need for rules that constrain and restrict in a top‐down manner the selection of representations generated by the artist's brain. Finally, artistic creation is a part of the personal history of the artist and stems from an anterior historical evolution.