Zum Einfluss von Migration und Schulklassenzugeh?rigkeit auf die übergangsempfehlung für die Sekundarstufe I

Ziel der vorliegenden Studie ist die Kl?rung der Frage, inwieweit sachfremde ethnische Kriterien die übergangsempfehlung für weiterführende Schulen beeinflussen. Bei einer Stichprobe von 620 Schülerinnen und Schülern der vierten Klassenstufe wurden Schulleistungstest- und Fragebogendaten erhoben und diese in Beziehung zu den übergangsempfehlungen gesetzt. Wenn individuelle Schülervoraussetzungen unter Einschluss kognitiver F?higkeiten kontrolliert werden, gibt es keine Best?tigung der Auffassung, dass Kinder mit Migrationshintergrund bei der übergangsempfehlung benachteiligt werden. Auch ein hoher Anteil an Kindern mit nicht-deutscher Familiensprache in der Schulklasse übt keine ungünstigen Effekte auf die Empfehlung der Schulform aus. Hingegen ist ein sachfremder Referenzgruppeneffekt (Big-fish-little-pond-Effekt) nachweisbar: Mit einem h?heren Anteil an Schülerinnen und Schülern in der Klasse, deren Schultestleistungen und kognitive Grundf?higkeiten hoch sind und deren Eltern eine h?here Bildungsorientierung aufweisen, sinkt die relative Chance, statt an eine Hauptschule an eine Realschule oder ein Gymnasium zu wechseln.     

Renegotiating vocational instruction

Recent research by the author and others suggests that secondary vocational instruction may often fail to develop students' analytical and critical thinking skills. This failure, it is argued, is manifest in teacher-student negotiation as set in a complex social, economic, and institutional context. The article focuses on how vocational education might be reformed to address this problem. Discussed are the need for instruction in problem solving and decision making, more basic skill instruction, student involvement in the group management of entrepreneurial projects, development of critical thinking skills for the purpose of improving workplaces and society, revision of vocational teacher preparation, and a restructuring of the ways in which secondary vocational education is offered. Vocational education is redefined as academically integrated, experiential coursework in which a diverse group of students is educated broadly for work, learning, and life.     

Alltagssituationen und Experimente: Was sind geeignete naturwissenschaftliche Lerngelegenheiten für Kindergartenkinder?

Natural sciences are an educational topic in kindergartens. At the same time, little is known about how to promote and facilitate the learning of natural sciences for children in kindergarten. This contribution reports on a quasi-experimental study with 245 children, which compares the learning situations ‘experiments’ with ‘discussions on the relevance of the natural sciences in daily life’. Three experimental groups, in which the learning situations were varied, where compared with a control and a baseline group. Children in the last year of kindergarten took part in three 90-minute learning settings on the topics ‘melting and freezing water’, ‘evaporation and condensation of water’ and ‘solubility and insolubility in water’. Learning gains were measured using a pre-post-design with a Rasch-scaling. Cognitive performance and family background were controlled for. A significant benefit in comparison to the control and baseline groups could only be found for a combination of both learning situations.     

Increased plasma zonulin in patients with sepsis

Introduction:

Zonulin is a eukaryotic protein structurally similar to Vibrio cholerae’s zonula occludens toxin. It plays an important role in the opening of small intestine tight junctions. The loss of gut wall integrity during sepsis might be pivotal and has been described in various experimental as well as human studies. Increased levels of zonulin could be demonstrated in diseases associated with increased intestinal inflammation, such as celiac disease and type 1 diabetes. We therefore investigated the role of plasma levels of zonulin in patients with sepsis as a non-invasive marker of gut wall integrity.

Materials and methods:

Plasma level of zonulin was measured in 25 patients with sepsis, severe sepsis or septic shock according to ACCP/SCCM criteria at the first day of diagnosed sepsis. 18 non-septic post-surgical ICU-patients and 20 healthy volunteers served as control. Plasma levels were determined by using commercially available ELISA kit. Data are given as median and interquartile range (IQR).

Results:

Significantly higher plasma concentration of zonulin were found in the sepsis group: 6.61 ng/mL (IQR 3.51–9.46), as compared to the to the post-surgical control group: 3.40 ng/mL (IQR 2.14–5.70) (P = 0.025), as well as to the healthy group: 3.55 ng/mL (IQR 3.14–4.14) (P = 0.008).

Conclusion:

We were able demonstrate elevated levels of plasma zonulin, a potential marker of intestinal permeability in septic patients. Increased zonulin may serve as an additional mechanism for the observed increased intestinal permeability during sepsis and SIRS.     

Learning trajectories among educational psychologists

In this article, special attention is paid to psychologists’ experiences of learning trajectories in educational counseling. The data consists of two case studies. They were selected from a total of 15 interviews with psychologists conducted as part of a research project on ‘Changing Practices in Educational Psychological Practice (CPEPP) in Denmark’. The article analyses learning trajectories along what we refer to as the clinical versus the educational track in educational psychological practice. Learning trajectories are examples of how individuals combine and connect learning across both time and different places of work, formal education and further education. The clinical and the educational learning trajectories are analysed in relation to the psychologists’ previous educational and present work experience within a context of very substantial organizational change. A general theme of the article is therefore that learning should be analysed over (1) time, past–present–future over the course of a person's life; and (2) place, across contexts of activity and communities of practice with different and overlapping goals, values and rules. In this respect continued learning entails negotiating and coming to terms with a professional identity across time and space.     

Wie schneiden SINUS-Schulen bei PISA ab?

In Reaktion auf die Ergebnisse der TIMS-Studie wurde das BLK-Modellversuchsprogramm SINUS konzipiert und 1998 mit 180 Schulen über fünf Jahre betrieben. Im vorliegenden Beitrag berichten wir über zentrale Ergebnisse der summativen Evaluation des Programms. Ziel des Programms war es, (1) die Professionalisierung der Lehrkr?fte zu unterstützen, (2) die Qualit?t des mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Unterrichts zu verbessern und (3) die Lernprozesse und Lernergebnisse der Schülerinnen und Schüler zu f?rdern. Zur überprüfung der Ausgangslage und der Wirkungen des Programms diente ein Vergleich mit einer repr?sentativen Schulstichprobe. Dazu wurden an den SINUS-Schulen Erhebungen mit nationalen PISA-Instrumenten durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse der Abschlusserhebung im Jahr 2003 zeigen, dass SINUS im Verlauf der Programmzeit auf allen untersuchten Ebenen Wirkungen entfaltet hat. Dies betrifft die erfolgreiche Umsetzung der Projektinhalte auf Seiten der Lehrkr?fte, die positive Wahrnehmung des Unterrichts auf Seiten der Schülerschaft sowie die Interessen, Haltungen und Kompetenzen der Schülerinnen und Schüler an SINUS-Schulen. Die schulartspezifischen Analysen zeigen jedoch, dass SINUS nicht in allen Schularten die gleiche Wirksamkeit erzielt hat. In erster Linie scheinen die Hauptschulen, die Schulen mit mehreren Bildungsg?ngen und die Integrierten Gesamtschulen profitiert zu haben.     

Wie erfolgreich sind Gymnasiasten ohne Gymnasialempfehlung?

This contribution has the objective of analyzing the school success of pupils, whose parents chose a school with a higher academic profile than recommended by their teachers. On the basis of longitudinal data for a complete transition cohort of 81,811 pupils in Lower Saxony, Germany, we will investigate the link between teachers’ recommendations for school-type at the end of year 4, the parents’ choice of school-type and pupils’ ultimate success. The criterion used here for measuring success is reaching year 7 without repeating a year. 15% of the parents chose a school-type with a higher academic profile than had been recommended. All groups of pupils with conflicting recommendations and eventual choice—whether for the academically-oriented Gymnasium or the more vocationally-oriented Realschule—were generally successful. Overall 12% of the total sample is successfully studying at a school-type of higher academic profile than recommended. These results mean that educational resources are not being fully exploited and educational chances restricted.     

The Relationship Between Students’ Motives to Communicate With Their Instructors and Classroom Environment

This study examined the relationships between students’ motives for communicating with their instructors (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse making, and sycophantic) and their perceptions of the classroom environment (i.e., classroom climate, classroom connectedness, and personalized education). Participants were 174 undergraduate students enrolled in several introductory communication courses at a large, Mid-Atlantic university. The results indicated that students’ self-reports of their relational, functional, participatory, and sycophantic motives to communicate with their instructors were positively related to their perceptions of the classroom environment, but students’ self-reports of their excuse-making motives were not related to their perceptions of the classroom climate. Future research should examine whether students’ motives to communicate with their instructors remain constant or whether these motives fluctuate over the course of a semester or increase or decrease based on the instructional tasks that normally occur during an instructional period.