Development of the Beliefs about Primary Education Scale: Distinguishing a developmental and transmissive dimension

In this article the development and validation of the Beliefs about Primary Education Scale (BPES) are described. The BPES is an 18-item scale for assessing primary school teachers’ beliefs toward the nature of good education, subdivided in a transmissive dimension (TD) and a developmental dimension (DD). Both dimensions assess beliefs toward the general orientation and objectives of education, the nature of the educational content, and desirable ways of knowledge acquisition. An explorative study (n=352$n=352$) revealed a two-factor structure. Both dimensions were uncorrelated, which leads to the suggestion that teachers hold layered belief systems. In a following study (n=381), construct validity of the BPES was confirmed. The BPES’ DD and TD were shown to correlate significantly with constructivist and traditional teaching beliefs.     

Perceived differences and preferred norms: Dutch physical educators constructing gendered ethnicity

Many physical education (PE) teachers have been challenged by the shift from teaching in primarily ethnic homogenous contexts to multi-ethnic (ME) classes. Teachers in secondary schools often experience difficulty in class management in such classes. This difficulty may limit their ability to create a positive student–teacher relationship and may result in practices of inclusion, exclusion and marginalisation. The purpose of this paper was to explore how Dutch PE teachers construct their relationship with their students and manage differences in ME classes. Using video stimulation, we interviewed 11 Dutch secondary school PE teachers about their teaching and managing of ME classes. Findings showed that these teachers tended to target a specific group of boys in their teaching and class management. In addition, their class management seemed to be based on an invisible norm about appropriate student behaviour.     

20世纪元代诗学研究概述

元代出现了一批诗话、诗格、诗法类著作，这类著作具有一定的文学批评理论价值，因而也引起了研究者一定程度的关注。20世纪学者们对元代诗话、诗格、诗法的研究，是元代文学批评史研究的一部分，因此有必要对20世纪的元代诗话、诗格、诗法的研究进行回顾和清理。     

The Importance of Ideals in Education

The article argues that it is important to offer children ideals. Ideals are defined as imagined excellences, which are so desirable that people will try to actualise them. These characteristics show the importance of ideals for people: ideals give direction and meaning to their lives. The motivating power of ideals can, however, also lead to fanaticism. Education should therefore involve several worthy ideals that children can commit themselves to as well as critical reflection on the ways in which people are committed to and try to actualise them.     

Effects of single‐sex versus co‐educational classes and schools on gender differences in progress in language and mathematics achievement

In this study, the effects of single‐sex versus co‐educational classes and schools on the progress in language and mathematics of boys and girls at the end of the second year of secondary education are investigated. Data from the Longitudinaal Onderzoek Secundair Onderwijs project are used. Multilevel analyses were carried out on a sample of approximately 4000 pupils, 330 classes (190 single‐sex), 180 teachers and 50 schools (20 single‐sex). The results indicate that for boys the gender composition of the classes has more impact than the gender composition of the schools, whereas for girls the gender composition of the schools is more important. Boys make more progress for language (and not for mathematics) in co‐educational classes even after we have taken into account the selective nature of the classes. Girls, on the other hand, make more progress for mathematics (but not for language) in single‐sex than in co‐educational schools.     

日本为何不肯正视侵略战争事实

二战后，由于对发动侵略战争的军国主义势力打击不够彻底，留下各种隐患，日本朝野为侵略战争歌功颂德之风迭起。日本既不愿放下历史包袱，又想一圆“大国梦”，是造成这种奇特现象的根本原因。     

Letter processing in dyslexic subgroups

Hypothesized cognitive strengths and weaknesses of three dyslexic subgroups (Boder and Jarrico 1982) were examined in two reading related experiments. The first experiment tested the prediction that auditorily presented letter sets should be processed better by dyseidetic than by dysphonetic readers. The prediction was not confirmed. The results did not show any modality of presentation-specific recall differences between the three dyslexic subgroups. Overall, dyslexic children’s scores were significantly lower than those of age-matched control groups. The second experiment tested predictions of differential performance of dyseidetic and dysphonetic readers in a task in which the name identity of letters in pairs had to be indicated. Predicted patterns were not confirmed. Compared to the control groups all three dyslexic subgroups (whose means did not differ significantly) made significantly more errors in the condition in which it was essential to activate phonetic representations of the letters. The experimental results of this study suggest a greater similarity in the nature of letter processing problems in dyslexic children than is assumed in Boder and Jarrico’s (1982) subtyping test. This research was supported by grant 634301 from the Department of Special Education, State University of Groningen, and a travel grant from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.). Based on a presentation at the 32nd Annual Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society, Baltimore, Maryland, November 1982.     

Comparisons of adopted and nonadopted adolescents in a large, nationally representative sample

There are conflicting findings about whether adopted children have more psychological and behavioral problems than nonadoptees. Research results are discrepant partly because many previous studies were based on small clinical samples or on samples biased by self-selection. A nationally representative school survey (Add Health) was used to compare adopted (n = 1,587) and nonadopted adolescents (total N = 87,165) across a wide variety of measures. Standardized mean differences show that adopted adolescents are at higher risk in all of the domains examined, including school achievement and problems, substance use, psychological well-being, physical health, fighting, and lying to parents. Demographic and background variable breakdowns show that the effect sizes for differences between adopted and nonadopted adolescents were larger for males, younger or older adolescents, Hispanics or Asians, and adolescents living in group homes or with parents of low education. Distributional analyses revealed approximately a 1:1 ratio of adopted to nonadopted adolescents in the middle ranges of the outcome variables but a ratio of 3:1 or greater near the tails of the distributions. These data clearly show that more adopted adolescents have problems of various kinds than their nonadopted peers; effect sizes were small to moderate based on mean differences, but comparisons of distributions suggest much larger proportions of adopted than nonadopted adolescents at the extremes of salient outcome variables.     

Lesen Mädchen anders?

Zusammenfassung Die Gender bezogene Forschung der letzten Jahre setzte sich insbesondere mit Differenzen in mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Kompetenzen auseinander, w?hrend die Unterschiede im Leseverst?ndnis weniger Beachtung fanden. Dabei sind national wie auch international die Befunde von gro? angelegten Schulvergleichsstudien konsistent: M?dchen lernen schneller und besser lesen, und auch wenn die Jungen in der Sekundarstufe aufholen, so erreichen sie den Stand der M?dchen auch im Jugendalter noch nicht. Anhand der 2001 durchgeführten Internationalen Grundschul-Lese-Untersuchung (IGLU) wird untersucht, ob der Vorsprung der M?dchen im Leseverst?ndnis schon in der Grundschule angelegt ist. Anhand differenzieller Item Analysen wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob sich auch bei einzelnen Fragen systematische Unterschiede zwischen M?dchen und Jungen nachweisen lassen. Anhand der Analysen kann gezeigt werden, dass geringe Geschlechtsdifferenzen bezüglich des Frageformats (offenes Antwortformat vs. Multiple Choice) und den Leseleistungen bei literarischen und Informationstexten bestehen. Bei Betrachtung der in IGLU getesteten Verstehensaspekte ergeben sich keine Differenzen zwischen Jungen und M?dchen. Hingegen ist bezüglich der Aufgabenschwierigkeiten ein Zusammenhang mit geschlechtsspezifischen L?sungsh?ufigkeiten festzustellen, was ?ltere Befunde stützt, die gezeigt haben, dass M?dchen routinierter lesen. Als m?gliche Konsequenz dieser Untersuchung k?nnte die Anregung gegeben werden, im Unterricht vermehrt Leseanreize zu geben, welche Jungen eher ansprechen, um sie so zum vermehrten Lesen zu führen. In sp?teren Untersuchungen w?re dann zu kl?ren, ob die Jungen so mehr Sicherheit bei routinierten Leseaufgaben erreichen k?nnten und ggf. zu dem von M?dchen gezeigten Niveau des Leseverst?ndnisses aufschlie?en k?nnten.

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Summary Over the last few years research has particularly concerned itself with gender differences between competencies in mathematics and natural sciences, whilst differences in reading comprehension have had little attention. At the same time, national and international evidence from large-scale school comparisons has shown consistently that girls learn to read faster and better. Even when boys catch up at secondary level, they do not reach the girl’ standard in their teens. On the basis of the international reading study IGLU carried out in 2001, this contribution will ask whether the girl’ head-start can already be observed at primary school level. Using differential item-analysis, the question of whether answers to individual questions show systematic differences will be investigated. The analysis shows only small gender differences regarding question format (open questions vs. multiple choice) and reading performance for literary and informational texts. Also, no differences between boys and girls can be found in the aspects of comprehension tested for in the IGLU-study. However, there is a connection between the level of task difficulty and the frequency of solving tasks by gender, which supports previous evidence that girls read more proficiently. A possible consequence of this study could be the using of reading incentives in class, which are particularly aimed at boys, to encourage their reading. Further studies would have to investigate whether boys achieve an improved confidence in tasks calling for reading proficiency and are therefore able to reach the standards of reading comprehension set by the girls.