Mechanismen der Elitebildung im deutschen Bildungssystem

The German education system is currently experiencing two contrasting trends: On the one hand, social opening, e.g. through the introduction of a partially-integrated secondary school system, compensatory all-day-schooling. On the other hand, an increasing vertical hierarchy in certain educational phases, e.g. through the explicitly encouraged introduction of private kindergartens and primary schools and the establishment of prime (academic track) Gymnasien and elite universities. In line with these structural changes, next to equality, the principle of excellence is gaining an increasing significance as a justification argument. This contribution will present the situation from an education-policy perspective, discuss theoretical discourses, and the national and international state of research on the topic of elitism and education. It will close with future research challenges.     

Feedback in educational communication in Czech secondary schools

This paper introduces an empirical study that examines how teachers evaluate pupils?? responses. The study draws on research undertaken at four secondary schools in the Czech Republic. It transpires that feedback has a stable position in the structure of communication; however, it is used only to verify pupils?? responses and not to elaborate them. An important feature of feedback is its implicitness and near-zero content value resulting from the teachers?? preferences to avoid explicit evaluative comments. This type of feedback is not in accordance with the concepts of dialogical education that currently dominate the field of the theory of educational communication.     

Mechanisms of lifelong learning: the spread of innovative short-cycle higher education qualifications within national systems

This study examines the process of the dissemination of innovative short-cycle higher education qualifications within European national lifelong learning systems. Using qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, the study focuses on the cases of the Netherlands and Flanders, and traces the emergence of the new idea, its metamorphosis within and communicating through the social systems, and the main proponents behind that process.     

Mapping the effects of policy on mathematics teacher education

Changes in school mathematics curricula, pedagogy and assessment, and as a consequence the pressure for changes in initial teacher preparation, are consequences both of government policy initiatives and pressure from unofficial agents such as the research community, teachers and others, though with great variation across the world. In the case of England, it has resulted in strong regulation, including inspection, of initial teacher education too. In this article, I draw on sociological theory to help in mapping the relations between official and unofficial agents and in interpreting the effects on mathematics teacher educators, in particular. The article draws in the main on the changing position in England over the last decade or so, and a case study analysis is carried out of a key official document to illustrate the application of theoretical tools provided by sociologists and others for examining the relations between agents and agencies and on their consequences.     

‘Be the Tree’: Classical Literature,Art Therapy,and Transcending Trauma in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Speak</Emphasis>

Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak concerns the rape and subsequent silence of ninth grade protagonist Melinda Sordino. By relying on extensive literary allusions involving trees, rape, silence, and transformation, Anderson creates a young adult problem novel that is both of the moment and timeless in its themes. The intertextuality of tree imagery in Speak can be placed in conversation with the rape and subsequent silence of women in classical myth and Shakespeare’s early tragedy Titus Andronicus. Grounded in Ovidian imagery, Speak has the appeal of an updated adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: a girl is raped by the high school equivalent of a god. She changes from typical adolescent to a withdrawn teen suffering from selective mutism. Yet Anderson allows a second metamorphosis: her protagonist is able to transcend her trauma through art, unlike the tragic nymphs of old whose stories ended upon their violation and subsequent transformations. Anderson’s imagery, deeply indebted to literature’s past but speaking to psychotherapy’s present, offers a distinct venue for readers to grapple with trauma and trees, and their long literary correlations.     

Exploring the limits of spatial memory in rats,using very large mazes

In Experiment 1, rats foraged for food in six successive phases with 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, and 48 arms attached in random locations to a large radial maze. The percentage of novel choices appeared to be determined more by spatial proximity than by number of arms. In Experiment 2, rats foraged for food in four successive phases with 8, 16, 24, and 48 arms attached to the maze in spread-out or tight configurations. Performance was poor in the tight configurations regardless of the number of arms. Performance was excellent in the 8-arm spread-out condition but declined as 16 and, then again, 24 arms were added. Thus, spatial separation, not number of locations, was the chief determinant of performance in the first two experiments. In Experiment 3, in successive phases, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 16, and 8 food towers were set in a circle on the floor, with the spatial separation between adjacent towers held constant at 33 cm. The percentage of novel choices declined as 8 towers became 16 and did not change again with 24, 32, 40, or 48 towers in place but then increased again as 16 towers became 8. In Experiment 4, in successive phases, 8, 16, 24, and 32 food towers were set in a circle, with the spatial separation between adjacent towers held constant at 66 cm. The percentage of novel choices declined as 8 towers became 16 and again as 16 towers became 24 but did not decline further. These data were discussed in terms of the fundamental problems posed by variations in the number of food locations in the pursuit of the limit of spatial memory in rats.     

美学研究领域中的新开拓--读季水河先生的《新闻美学》

季水河先生的新《新闻美学》建构的新闻美学体系将新闻活动纳入人类审美实践这一总体框架中来探索新闻活动本身所蕴含的美学意义，带来了学理的纵深层次的发掘，并从多维研究视角和传统超越上进行研究方法的创新，是实践美学开拓性的尝试。