Continuing professional development designed as second-order action research: work-in-progress

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to describe how Lesson Study as second-order action research can be applied and how we planned to evaluate and improve course design, learners’ progress, team members’ roles and learning objectives of a 2-year university course for English as a Second Language teachers. The article describes the concept of a Lesson Study conducted in a course for teachers with a minimum of 3 years of teaching experience, rather than for students or undergraduates as in traditional concepts of the Lesson Study approach. PFL (‘Pedagogy and Subject Didactics Programme’) is a 2-year programme consisting of three seminars and five groups meetings in which the participants focus on the reflection of their professional practice in their specific school situation. All participants are required to plan, carry out and document their own action research project. The team provides input on action research and current topics in language teaching and learning, and advises participants. The methodology follows a mixed-method approach based on action research methodologies including questionnaires, interviews and observations. Analyses are conducted qualitatively and quantitatively. The article presents the concept of the project but not yet findings at this stage due to curriculum development and approval issues.     

The Bologna Process in Italy

Italy was among the promoters of the Bologna Process and the early adopters of the reform. If one looks at its impact on the formal structure of curricula and study programmes, the reform undertaken under the Bologna banner seems to have been one of the major educational reforms ever achieved in Italy. This article describes how the Bologna Process has unfolded in Italy, looking at the reasons why a reform that for long eluded Italian policymakers and higher education managers finally succeeded. The theme is approached from the point of view of the contemporary theories of institutional change, looking at the actors and interactions that made this reform possible despite strong opposition. In fact, it was a series of contingent events that weakened the balance of powers governing Italian HE, thus making institutional change possible.     

Wer liegt am Ende der Grundschulzeit vorn?

The number of students enrolled in private schools has been growing continuously in the past years, especially in elementary schools. There is a variety of reasons for this development. Among other expectations, parents anticipate a superior education for their children and hope for bigger academic success. However, empirical results on the effectiveness of private schools are inconsistent and ambiguous, partly because many studies used cross-sectional data. Longitudinal studies investigating the development of elementary school students are especially lacking.The present study compares academic achievement gains of students enrolled in public schools to students who learned in the so-called BIP-creativity elementary schools. BIP schools are private schools that aim to promote the development of the talent, intelligence and personality of their students. This study investigates the development of students in mathematics, reading and orthography over a 4-years period.As the group of BIP-students is selected in terms of their socio-economic background, analyses were run in two ways. First, multilevel analyses controlling for student and class characteristics were performed. Second, a Propensity Score Matching based on school enrollment data was used in order to select a comparable group of students from public schools. Each BIP-student was matched to a student from the public schools that had a comparable socio-economic background and similar cognitive characteristics. Neither multilevel analyses nor mean comparisons of the matched samples could reveal any differences between the two groups of students in the three domains of academic achievement at the end of fourth grade.     

Validation of the Attitude-Older Adult and Aging-Visual Analogue Scales (At-O-A)

ABSTRACT

Occupational therapy programs have been developed in order to promote health in older adults. However, no published studies have yet been identified for the Spanish population. This study explores the benefits of an occupational therapy health promotion program called EnvejeHaciendo (AgeDoing). The study was conducted with 15 elderly Spanish adults, examining health perception and meaningful occupational participation using the Model of Human Occupation, as well as the pedagogical methodology See, Judge, Act. The results showed an increase in the perception of health with reference to social functioning and the number of roles in which the participants wanted to get involved in the future. The participants changed their own negative perception of elderly people, they adapted to the changes provoked by aging, and they got involved in meaningful activities such as physical exercise or social activities. This program allowed participants to engage in meaningful occupations with other people and to increase perceived health status through raising awareness of difficulties.     

The Importance of Being Colorful and Able to Fly: Interpretation and implications of children's statements on selected insects and other invertebrates

Children have served as research subjects in several surveys on attitudes to insects and invertebrates. Most of the studies have used quantitative scoring methods to draw conclusions. This paper takes a different approach as it analyzes children's free-text comments to gain an understanding of their viewpoints. A total of 246 children aged 9–13 completed a standard questionnaire regarding their attitudes toward 18 invertebrates indigenous to Switzerland. Fourteen insect species and four other invertebrates were individually presented in a color photograph without any further background information. The children were given the opportunity to provide comments on each animal to explain the attitude score they had awarded. Nearly 5,000 comments were coded and categorized into 7 positive and 9 negative categories. A significant correlation between fear and disgust was not detected. Based on a hierarchical cluster analysis, we concluded that flying in the air versus crawling on the ground was a major differentiator for attitude and underlying reasons, only being trumped by the fear of getting stung. The visualization of our findings in a cluster heat map provided further insights into shared statement categories by species. Our analysis establishes that fear and disgust are separate emotions with regard to insects and other invertebrates. Based on our findings, we believe that prejudice-based fear and culturally evolved revulsion can be overcome. We suggest promoting environmental education programs, especially if they allow for personal experience, provide information in emotion-activating formats, and include content that resolves existing misinformation and myths.     

Stigma Hauptschulabschluss?

Graduates of vocational training with or without an exit qualification from the German lower secondary school called ??Hauptschule?? have an above-average chance of being unemployed at the next level. Using a data set which includes both school exit qualifications and the marks from vocational training, we show that this increased probability of unemployment can be explained by the enduring stigmatization of graduating school with a low qualification level and by weaker performance in the final examination from vocational training. This leads to additive disadvantages at the next stage in a young person??s career. The attainment of a vocational qualification is, therefore, an insufficient basis for successful entry into the labor market. At a stage, when their integration into the labor market appears to have been secured??despite a problematic start?Cthese youths are, in fact, confronted with an increased risk of unemployment and a precarious start in their working career.     

Gender equity in mathematical achievement: the case of China

Gender differences in achievement in mathematics, a traditionally male-stereotyped subject, have long been a concern for many educators around the world. Gender differences in mathematical achievement have decreased in recent decades, especially in Western countries, and become small or insignificant in large-scale tests, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The situation in China has not yet been studied. The recent PISA report lists China B-S-J-G (representing Beijing–Shanghai–Jiangsu–Guangdong) as an educational system with no significant gender difference in mathematical achievement. Based on a secondary analysis of PISA 2015 mathematics data from China B-S-J-G, this study more deeply scrutinized gender differences in Chinese students’ mathematical performance, emphasizing societal factors, namely students’ socioeconomic status, school level, school type, school location, and socioeconomic status at school level. This analysis revealed important differences within the overall picture. Most importantly, significantly more boys than girls scored in the top tier of mathematics achievement. At the lower- and upper-secondary school levels, boys performed significantly better than girls, with the achievement difference increasing at the upper-secondary level. Furthermore, this study found that, on average, Chinese (B-S-J-G) girls achieved significantly lower average scores on the PISA 2015 mathematics test than boys in the same school. Overall, students’ individual characteristics and school characteristics need to be separated and both taken into account to examine the role of gender in mathematical achievement, which has not been thoroughly investigated in the past.     

Writing and knowledge: Effects and re-effects

Recent cognitive research on writing deals with various factors influencing writing (in the sense of textproduction). One of these factors is knowledge of a specific topic. The opposite effect of writing on knowledge, however, is rarely examined in research. Being interested in the relationships between knowledge and writing some of our results of a research project which has been conducted in the years 1987 to 1989, will be reported.     

Enhancing research collaborations: Three key management challenges

This conceptual paper explores three areas of research collaboration: (a) effectively harnessing differences, (b) setting defensible boundaries and (c) gaining legitimate authorization. The focus is on their potential lessons for individuals leading and managing research collaborations, evaluation of research partnerships and areas for further investigation. Examples from three partnerships - building the atomic bomb, the Human Genome Project and the World Commission on Dams - are used to highlight key elements of the ideas presented. The paper provides a framework for systematically thinking about integration of different perspectives and other elements essential to any particular collaboration. It also sketches out ideas for (1) managing differences which may destroy partnerships, (2) deciding what the collaboration should encompass, (3) understanding and accommodating forces which may distort what the collaboration is able to achieve, and (4) enlisting necessary supporters while preserving research independence.