Achievement Goals and Student Well-Being

This study is concerned with the role that achievement goals may play in facilitating the psychological well-being of students. Specifically, we build on “goal theory” analysis of adaptive behavior in examining the relationship between task and ego goals, perceptions of school emphases on task and ego goals, and indices of well-being and disruptive behavior. Generally, task goals and perception of the school as emphasizing task goals were related to positive psychological well-being, and ego goals and perceiving the school as emphasizing ego goals were related to negative psychological well-being. This pattern was found for both African American and Euro-American students. However, path analyses pointed to possible different processes as operating for the African Americans and the Euro-Americans in the sample.     

Biological applications of the “Filtered” Van der Pol oscillator

The present article deals with the development of an oscillatory model, which generates waveforms corresponding to ECG patterns. The present oscillatory system relies on coupling of oscillators derived from the famous VDP oscillator. We demonstrate that inducing a relaxation type of dynamics in the models contributes to their successful generation of ECG like signals. Furthermore, an interesting affinity is found, which associates the present models with a version of the well-known practical Wien Bridge oscillator. The presently discussed system relies on coupled elementary oscillator units. The present coupling is due to merely two units. The model, however, is likely to become even more realistic by coupling in the same manner an assembly of relatively many oscillators.     

Reasoning About the Scope of Religious Norms: Evidence From Hindu and Muslim Children in India

Conflicts arise when members of one religion apply their norms to members of another religion. Two studies explored how one hundred 9- to 15-year-old Hindu and Muslim children from India reason about the scope of religious norms. Both Hindus and Muslims from a diverse Hindu–Muslim school (Study 1) and Hindus from a homogeneous Hindu school (Study 2) more often judged it wrong for Hindus to violate Hindu norms, compared to Muslim norms, and said the opposite for Muslims. In contrast, children judged it wrong for both Hindus and Muslims to harm others. Thus, even in a setting marred by religious conflict, children can restrict the scope of a religion's norms to members of that religion, providing a basis for peaceful coexistence.     

Teacher and student: Designing a democratic relationship

Teaching is a practice that aims to develop appropriate relationships between the mature and the immature. The good teacher has learned to balance the personal and the impersonal dimensions of daily contact with young people. Classroom experiences are often so subtle and the time for reflection too frequently so minimal that teachers have to rely on momentary responses rather than careful analysis. But, when we tease out the meanings and the implications of our experience, we are able to spot the limitations of our assumptions, to examine the craft of our profession, and to contemplate the new horizons that our students open up. The moments considered in this paper all concern the opportunities and dangers of conversation in a school. The goal is to provide notes on the ways adults succeed or fail in their efforts to engage young people in meaningful conversation. The mutuality of the teacher/student relationship signifies the obligation of the mature to provide, as Dewey says, 'whatever capacity for sympathetic understanding' we have gained from our own experience to each educational occasion.     

The impact of placing pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools on the achievement of their peers

Background Over the past 20 years or so policy and practice on the education of children with special educational needs (SEN) has been aimed at placing increasing numbers of children in a mainstream school environment. Although this policy has been supported in principle by many teachers, parents and local authority officers, there has been much less agreement about whether this principle can be realized in practice, and even if it can, about what the impacts might be on the achievements of pupils with SEN in mainstream schools and, in particular, on their peers.

Purpose This paper discusses the key findings from a systematic review of the literature carried out by the Inclusion Review Group, on behalf of the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI)-Centre, the purpose of which was to review research evidence on whether the placement of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) within mainstream schools has an impact on academic and social outcomes for pupils without SEN.

Design and methods The methodology followed the procedures adopted by the EPPI-Centre. Having agreed on the inclusion and exclusion criteria for studies that could be included in the review, an initial pool of 7137 papers were identified through electronic databases. After having screened all their titles and/or abstracts and having marked out possible papers to be included in the review, 119 paper copies were obtained—all of which were read by one or more of the authors of this paper. This led to a further reduction to 26 studies that were subjected to the EPPI data extraction process and synthesis.

Conclusions Overall, the findings suggest that there are no adverse effects on pupils without SEN of including pupils with special needs in mainstream schools, with 81% of the outcomes reporting positive or neutral effects. Despite concerns about the quality of some of the studies that were reviewed and the fact that the great majority were carried out in the USA, these findings should bring some comfort to headteachers, parents and local authority officers around the world at a time when concerns have been raised about the problems that schools face in responding to the twin agenda of becoming more inclusive and, at the same time, raising the achievements of all their pupils.     

MATAL: the Israel Elementary Science Project‐‐a Retrospective

Summaries

English

In this article, the authors reflect on the development and implementation of the Israel Elementary Science Project (MATAL). The MATAL project, initially established in 1968, used British and American programmes as its foundation, but so modified them that they became applicable to the needs of less developed countries. The authors describe the structure and content of their project, as well as their work in teacher training and the development of ancillary and enrichment programmes. It is hoped that the Israeli experience in developing an elementary school science curriculum will be of interest and potential benefit to curriculum workers in other countries also.     

Educational/Instructional Media

ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources, review of six recent items

Audiovisual Market Place 1980 (New York: Bowker, 1980---$29.95, paper)

Don Kaplan's Video in the Classroom: A Guide to Creative Television (White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Industry Publications, 1980---price not given, paper)

Anne Howe, ed. International Yearbook of Educational and Instructional Technology 1980/81 (London: Kogan Page/New York: Nichols Publishing Co., 1980---$32.50)

Esther R. Dyer, comp. “Cultural Pluralism and Children's Media” (Chicago: American Library Association, 1978 ---price not given, paper)