The Use of ICT in Education: a survey of schools in Europe

The Survey of Schools: ICT in education commissioned in 2011 by the European Commission took place between January 2011 and November 2012, with data collection in autumn 2011. This article presents the main findings of the Survey based on over 190,000 questionnaire answers from students, teachers and head teachers in primary, lower and upper secondary schools randomly sampled. The article details the analytical framework design and the survey methodology implemented. It then presents the main ‘state of the art’ indicators that have been built, concerning ICT infrastructure and access to it, frequency of students' ICT based activities during lessons, level of teachers' and students' confidence in their digital competences, their opinion about using ICT for teaching and learning, and the school strategies to support ICT integration in teaching and learning. The article also presents the main findings of the exploratory part of the analysis, introducing the concepts of digitally supportive school, digitally confident and supportive teacher and digitally confident and supportive student, estimating their respective proportion at EU level on average and by country and investigating whether high percentage of digitally supportive schools include high percentages of digitally confident and positive teachers and students. A few recommendations for policy making at European, national, regional/local and institutional levels conclude the article.     

Gaze‐Contingent Display Changes as New Window on Analytical and Holistic Face Perception in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

The strength of holistic face perception in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was evaluated by applying the gaze‐contingent mask and window technique to a face matching and discrimination task in 6‐ to 14‐year‐old children with (n = 36) and without ASD (n = 47), and by examining fixation patterns. Behavioral results suggested a slower and less efficient face processing in the ASD sample compared with the matched control group. Comparing the moving mask and window conditions revealed a reduced holistic face processing bias in the younger age group but not in the older sample. Preferential viewing patterns revealed both similarities and differences between both participant groups.     

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OR INTEGRATION FOR WOMEN IN THE DUTCH ACADEMIC WORLD

In 1981, the career structure in Dutch higher education was modified in such a way that performance criteria, particularly possession of a doctorate and research and publication activity, were required for promotion. In particular, the hierarchy of university posts below that of full professor was modified in such a way that persons holding so‐called WHM(senior scientific staff level) positions were required to reapply for the new UHD(associate professor) positions on a competitive basis which stressed the publication record of candidates. Using a sampling of academic women drawn from the natural sciences, the authors offer an explanation as to why women academics did less well than men in the competitions for these new posts. Although the process did not discriminate against women as such, it did not favour academics on the periphery of the profession, where many women at the time found themselves. The situation identified was the result of social factors more than of institutional discrimination. Presently, younger women ‐graduate students ‐ are rapidly moving from the periphery of the profession to the centre. Active involvement in professional networks will aid academic women in their careers; however, over‐involvement in family matters (the care network) may be harmful to the career progress of academic women.     

Beyond additive and multiplicative reasoning abilities: how preference enters the picture

While previous studies mainly focused on children’s additive and multiplicative reasoning abilities, we studied third to sixth graders’ preference for additive or multiplicative relations. This was investigated by means of schematic problems that were open to both types of relations, namely arrow schemes containing three given numbers and a fourth missing one. In study 1, children had to fill out the missing number, while in study 2, children had to indicate all possibly correct answers among a set of given alternatives. Both studies explicitly showed the existence of a preference for additive relations in some children, while others preferred multiplicative relations. Mainly younger children preferred additive relations, whereas mainly children in upper primary education preferred multiplicative relations. Number ratios also impacted children’s preference, especially in fifth grade. Moreover, the results of study 2 provided evidence for the strength of children’s preference and showed that calculation skills do not coincide with preference, and hence, that preference and calculation skills are two distinct child characteristics. The results of both studies using these open problems resembled previous research results using classical multiplicative or additive word problems. This supports the hypothesis that children’s preferred type of relations may be at play in solving classical word problems as well—besides their abilities—and may hence be an additional factor explaining the mistakes that children make in those word problems. This research line thus seems promising for further research as well as educational practice.     

教师知识和教学的知识基础

作者把一切与专业有关的洞察力都看做教学的知识基础,认为它们与教师的行为有着内在的联系。由此,本文提出要把教师知识或者教师的实践性知识和正式的命题知识纳入教学的知识基础当中。虽然教师知识与个人经历及情境有着紧密的联系,但教师知识的某些特征却为所有的教师或大部分教师所共同拥有。研究教师知识就是要找出这些共同特征,从而对教师知识的复杂性和特殊性做出公正的评价,但这在方法论上可能存在困难。为了说明教师知识研究的潜在益处以及局限,作者呈现了几种研究的结果。这些研究的一个主要结论是,理解教师知识不仅能够改进教师教育而且能够促进教育改革的成功。最后,作者指出未来研究的三个重要领域。     

The intra-active production of normativity and difference

Drawing on memory stories told in a collective biography workshop about children’s encounters with schooling, this paper experiments with re-imagining the child-student-subject as an ‘emergent intracorporeal multiplicity’ [Fritsch, K. 2015. “Desiring Disability Differently: Neoliberalism, Heterotopic Imagination and Intra-Corporeal Configurations.” Foucault Studies 19: 43–66, 51]. From the feminist new materialist perspective that the authors work with, the child is configured not as an entity prior to, or separate from, encounters with education systems, but emergent with-in them. This paper focuses on difference in human relations, and in particular on the intersections of disability and gender. It does so not in terms of essential characteristics of individuals, but as emergent, in-the-moment, with others. In focussing on the detail of lives-in-their-making, the authors ask, with Barad [2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press], if we are interested in justice, how we are to ‘understand our role in helping constitute who and what come to matter?’     

Logical positivism as a tool to analyse the problem of chemistry's lack of relevance in secondary school chemical education

Secondary school chemical education has a problem: namely, the seeming irrelevance to the pupils of chemistry. Chemical education prepares pupils for participation in society. Therefore, it must imply a model of society, of chemistry, and of the relation between them. In this article it is hypothesized that logical positivism currently offers this model. Logical positivism is a philosophy of science that creates a divide between science and society. It is therefore further hypothesized that the adoption of logical positivism causes chemistry's lack of relevance in chemical education. Both hypotheses could be confirmed by an analysis of a grade nine course.     

Pigeons’ memory for time: Assessment of the role of subjective shortening in the duration-comparison procedure

Pigeons were trained in a duration-comparison procedure to peck one key if the comparison duration (c) was 1 sec shorter than a standard duration (s), and another key if c was 1 sec longer than s. During training, the s-c delay was 1 sec, and the total duration of an s-c pair was not predictive of the correct choice. In Experiment 1, during equal-duration pair test trials, pigeons increasingly responded long (i.e., c τ s) as the s-c delay was lengthened. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that s affected long responding on equal-duration test trials, even at the 8-sec s-c delay. In Experiment 3, long responding increased as the s-c delay was lengthened, even when stimulus conditions during the s-c delay differed from those during the intertrial interval (ITI). Additional analyses indicated that it was unlikely that the increase in long responding was due to the pigeons’ adding the s-c delay to c and comparing the total against the duration of s. The increase in long responding with an increase in s-c delay is more consistent with subjective shortening of s than with confusion between the s-c delay and the ITI.