Pedro Gutiérrez Bueno’s Textbooks: Audiences, Teaching Practices and Chemical Revolution

Pedro Gutiérrez Bueno wrote two editions of a chemistry textbook between 1788 and 1802. The paper offers a comparative view of both editions taking into account Gutiérrez Bueno’s biography, his intended audience and the changes related to the so-called chemical revolution. Some conclusions are at odds with common images about scientific revolutions and the role of textbooks in science. The analysis aims to shed some light on the multiple historical forces shaping textbooks and the way in which scientific change is assimilated by their writers. This research was partially supported by the program BHA2002-04611-CO3-02     

Phonological awareness in kindergarten: a field study in Luxembourgish schools

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of a phonological awareness training program in the specific context of the Luxembourgish educational system. The intervention was run by the kindergarten teachers in their classes with minimal external supervision. Forty-one classes of the area around Luxembourg City participated in the study. One hundred and fifty children from 20 kindergarten classes were part of the training group and 157 children from 21 classes formed the control group. At the end of kindergarten, clear training effects were observed for all phonological awareness tasks, except for the highly demanding phoneme deletion task. After 6 months of reading and writing instruction in first grade, no training effects were found in a pseudoword spelling task for the entire training group. Only at-risk children, which had the lowest performance on preschool phonological awareness measures, showed significant training effects. We conclude that early phonological awareness training may be profitably incorporated in kindergarten classroom activities, particularly for at-risk pupils, even when the language characteristics and teaching methods already concur in facilitating the understanding of the alphabetic principle.     

REA Presidential Address: Spaces of Inter-cultural Provocation for Religious Formation

In this essay, I reflect on the challenges faced by professors teaching Jewish studies in a Catholic university system. The essay records my experiences teaching two courses, “Judaism and the Holocaust” and “American Judaism: Thought and Culture,” at Santa Clara University as an adjunct lecturer during the academic year 1994‐95. The essay touches on broader questions concerning “the dialectics of difference” that inform cross‐cultural education and exchange. Teach‐ ing Jewish studies in any Gentile space (Catholic, Protestant, or secular) entails a constructive tension between trust and suspicion, candor and reserve.     

Envisioning a critical social pedagogy of learning and work in a contemporary culture of cyclical lifelong learning

In Canada, current federal learning-and-work policy is focused on individual learner-worker development using an iteration of lifelong learning as cyclical. This policy aims to enhance the social as an effect of enhancing the economic. In this neoliberal milieu, cyclical lifelong learning has become not only a norm but also a culture and an attitude. Still, a current Canadian phenomenon indicates that increasing numbers of young adults are disengaging from participation in such learning that the federal government considers being a preventive measure. In discussing their withdrawal from what might be perceived as cyclical lifelong learning for control, I consider a particularly challenging case: the predicament of young adults in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. To help us think about adequately addressing the dislocation they experience in life and work, I offer a Freire-informed vision of a critical social pedagogy of learning and work. This pedagogy calls for re-engendering the social in lifelong learning by revitalizing critical social concerns with historical awareness, hope, possibility, ethics, justice, democratic vision, learner freedom, critique, and intervention.     

Parent Involvement,Parental Depression,and Program Satisfaction Among Low-Income Parents Participating in a Two-Generation Early Childhood Education Program

Research Findings: This study simultaneously examined parental depression and parent involvement as predictors of satisfaction with an early childhood intervention program. Parents (N = 203) of Head Start children participated in this short-term longitudinal study. Measures of parent involvement and satisfaction assessed multiple dimensions of these constructs. Nearly 40% of low-income mothers reported being sometimes or chronically depressed over the course of 1 year of the Head Start program. Compared with mothers who were never depressed, those who were sometimes depressed reported less involvement in home- and school-based activities as well as fewer interactions with their child's teacher. Never depressed parents were more likely to be satisfied with their child's teacher compared with either group of depressed mothers. Higher levels of parent involvement and parent–teacher interaction predicted optimal satisfaction with Head Start services. Practice or Policy: Implications of results for practice are considered in terms of teacher training to recognize unique needs involved in working to establish a home–school connection with mothers experiencing depression. Strategies for building community partnerships to assist with mental health needs are discussed.     

Sources of difficulty in assessment: example of PISA science items

ABSTRACT

The understanding of what makes a question difficult is a crucial concern in assessment. To study the difficulty of test questions, we focus on the case of PISA, which assesses to what degree 15-year-old students have acquired knowledge and skills essential for full participation in society. Our research question is to identify PISA science item characteristics that could influence the item’s proficiency level. It is based on an a-priori item analysis and a statistical analysis. Results show that only the cognitive complexity and the format out of the different characteristics of PISA science items determined in our a-priori analysis have an explanatory power on an item’s proficiency levels. The proficiency level cannot be explained by the dependence/independence of the information provided in the unit and/or item introduction and the competence. We conclude that in PISA, it appears possible to anticipate a high proficiency level, that is, students’ low scores for items displaying a high cognitive complexity. In the case of a middle or low cognitive complexity level item, the cognitive complexity level is not sufficient to predict item difficulty. Other characteristics play a crucial role in item difficulty. We discuss anticipating the difficulties in assessment in a broader perspective.     

Teachers reflecting on their work: articulating what is said about what is done

Teachers' written reflections on their work, which report on a change in their practice, were the object of this research. Taking teachers' articulation of their plans and actions in teacher journals as our source, this study's aim is twofold: (1) to describe how teacher reflect in a self‐initiated and non‐framed way on their own practice, and (2) to review teacher self generated reflections in reference to models of reflection. In this way, we tried to disclose what precisely teachers write (said) when reflecting on their work (did) in order to appreciate their way of describing what matters in their work; and position this in reference to models that conceptualise (“talk”) on how to actualise (‘walk’) reflection. This ‘double’ articulation of reflection is gauged in two ways, i.e., on: a) completeness, that is, whether it includes relevant components of reflection (models) to be found in the literature, and on b) recursiveness, that is, whether the written account gives evidence of an integrated cyclical, i.e., recursive process of re‐view, which appraises and looks back on what has been accomplished.

The results show that teachers do not work along the lines identified in current reflection models (i.e. providing clear problem definition, searching for evidence, planning for change, and reviewing plans). Instead, many teachers use a narrative and valuing appraisal of their accomplishments; not so much cautiously reviewing their actions but prospectively commenting on plans and solutions for future action. The data lead us to be cautious about the prominence of reflection models as advocated in the literature to be applied to teachers' written accounts of their practice.     

Learning by starch potato growers: learning in small businesses with no employees

In small businesses with no employees, learning environments have a low learning readiness. Consequently, learners need to rely on their own agency to shape their learning experiences. Results from a study of agricultural entrepreneurs indicated that the components of motivation and self-regulated learning strategies shape learner's agency and explain learning environment configuration in small businesses with no employees. Configuration of the learning environment was found to be a weak determinant of the learning performance of these learners. However, results showed that prior performance of learners in small businesses with no employees dictates how their agency operates and what learning effect is achieved; higher prior performance results in higher learning effects. We conclude that mechanisms that underlie learning in traditional learning environments work similarly in learning environments in small businesses with no employees.     

Experiments of two-level training in Hungarian higher education

An experiment designed to train engineering students to two levels of terminal achievement within single institutions is reported. The operative engineers (formerly high level technicians) qualify after three years whilst research and development engineers (fully qualified engineers) take five years. Organisational and curricular problems necessarily created by such integrated schemes are described and discussed. Social attitudes in society in general and in the student body in particular make the task of directing students towards the shorter form of training complex and difficult. From the experience gained so far it can confidently be asserted that the experiments in two-level training have been successful.Note by the Editor: This article is an abbreviated version prepared by the Editor of a 90-page UNESCO (copyright) report with the same title, Document ED. 75/WS/64, dated October 1975. We are grateful to the authors and to UNESCO for permission to print this summary of the report.