Assessment in French primary schools

ABSTRACT

Despite its current high regard in parts of the English educational community, education in France has been as much the subject of public and political concern in recent years as it has in many other countries. One manifestation of this concern was the Loi Jospin of 1989, the aim of which was to continue to encourage the growth of diversity among schools as a response to local needs. Associated with this goal was that of making teachers more willing and able to respond to the increasingly diverse needs of their pupils. By so doing, it was hoped to raise the overall level of student success within the system. This paper looks at one aspect of teachers’ practice and the impact of current reforms on it–that of assessment. Having briefly described the provisions of the Jospin Law, it discusses how these are affecting teachers’ attitudes and practice, using data from the ESRC‐funded ‘Systems, Teachers and Educational Policy’ (STEP) project (ESRC Award No.: R 000 23 4673). Some tentative conclusions about the scale of change and the significance of French primary teachers’ attitudes to assessment are offered.     

Home advantage in soccer: a retrospective analysis

The existence of home advantage has been established for all major professional team sports in England and North America. The advantage was found to be greatest in soccer, with the home team currently obtaining about 64% of all points gained in the English Football League. Home advantage has changed very little since the formation of the League in 1888 and there are only small variations between the four Divisions of the League. The advantage is less marked in local derbies, in the FA Cup and in nonprofessional competitions. It is greater in the European Cup and increases as the stages of the competition progress. The allocation of three points, instead of two, for a win in the Football League has not changed home advantage, but its effect has been greatly reduced in the GM Vauxhall Conference where an away win gains more points than a home win. The statistical evidence suggests that crowd support and travel fatigue contribute less to home advantage in soccer than do the less easily quantifiable benefits of familiarity with conditions when playing at home. Further possible explanations for the advantage are discussed in the light of findings in other sports.     

Evidence of a reduced home advantage when a team moves to a new stadium

Home advantage is well documented for professional baseball, basketball and ice hockey in North America. One of the possible causes of this advantage is familiarity with the local playing facility. This was investigated and quantified in an analysis of 37 teams moving to new stadiums, but in the same city, from 1987 to 2001. Home advantage during the first season in a new stadium after the move was significantly less than home advantage in the final season in the old stadium (P= 0.011). The reduction was evident in all three sports. Possible confounding factors, such as crowd size and crowd density, were considered but did not appear to have an effect. It is estimated that about 24% of the advantage of playing at home maybe lost when a team relocates to a new facility.     

A conceptual framework for understanding children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten

The transition from home to kindergarten, for most children, is the first and major ecological transition in their educational life. Kindergarten is the first educational setting in which children make sense about ‘school’ as a place to learn and about themselves as ‘pupils’. In this transition, children cross a cultural boundary from home to kindergarten and, in fact, they commute between the two cultural settings. In Vygotsky's view, children are active culture learners. How they cope with, and adapt to, the novel kindergarten is crucial to their ‘pupil career’ in their life‐long learning. Thus, this paper aims to provide early childhood education professionals with a framework to understand children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. This paper begins with a review of the concept of transition. It then presents a conceptual framework of the understanding of children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. Major elements of the conceptual framework are derived from sociocultural theory, and analyses of ‘rites of passage’ and ‘pupil career’. This highlights the relationships between layers of context, stages of transition, and adaptation outcomes.