Teacher professional development through collaborative action research: impact on foreign English-language teaching and learning

In 2011 we, a group of English-as-a-foreign-language teachers at a secondary school in Argentina, decided to investigate our teaching practices through collaborative action research so as to improve our students’ learning opportunities and thus revitalise English-language teaching in our context. We implemented and evaluated the integration of content and language learning in our classrooms through the development of our own materials. The experience revealed a growth in professional development and how our motivation and autonomy influenced our students’ motivation and language development. In our attempt to disseminate our experience as a group, this report particularly focuses on the evaluation facets of our collaborative action research project so as to encourage other teachers and teacher-researchers to adopt collaborative action research to improve their own practices.     

La adquisición del rol y la identidad sexual? función de la familia

Resumen

Este trabajo examina el proceso de adquisición de la identidad y el rol sexual, así como algunos factores que condicionan esta evolución. Se utiliza el método clínico piagetiano, con la ayuda de imágenes gráficas.

Entre las conclusiones más importantes cabe señalar: 1) La adquisición de la identidad y el rol sexual tiene lugar, en sus aspectos más destacados, entre los dos y tres años de vida, 2) La conservación (autoaplicada) de la identidad no es alcanzada hasta los 5–7 años, aproximadamente, 3) Los roles sexuales reproducen de forma particularmente directa la situación del núcleo familiar.     

Fenómenos transicionales en el acceso al lenguaje

Resumen

Se ha estudiado durante 6 meses el desarrollo de 4 sujetos, que tenían 7, 12, 18 y 21 meses de edad al comienzo de la investigación. Para ello se ha grabado en video a los sujetos mensualmente, durante una hora, en su hogar. También se le han aplicado pruebas de las escalas de desarrollo de Uzgiris y Hunt (1975) para determinar su desarrollo cognitivo.

Sobre los 9 meses los niños ya son capaces de comunicar algunas intenciones, mediante gestos y vocalizaciones. Las funciones que cubren son progresivamente sustituidas y ampliadas por producciones que ya son lingüísticas. La eclosión del lenguaje se manifiesta después de que los niños realizan avances importantes en su desarrollo cognitivo, en el establecimiento de relaciones entre producciones fonéticas y significados intencionales, y en sus conductas comunicativas. Se concluye que, si bien la aparición del lenguaje es preparada por estas formas transicionales y logros anteriores, ninguna de ellas aisladamente permite explicar el empleo sistemático de palabras, que supone un nivel cualitativamente nuevo en la competencia de los niños, resultado de una síntesis creadora de logros precedentes.     

Psicología y Didácticas: una relación a debate

Resumen

El artículo revisa las relaciones entre, por una parte, la psicología de la educación y de la instrucción y, por otra, las didácticas específicas. Partiendo de las representaciones que didactas y psicólogos tienen de sus respectivos campos de trabajo, se constata la existencia de un «espacio de problemas» común en torno a los procesos escolares de enseñanza y aprendizaje y, al mismo tiempo, una aproximación netamente diferenciada a dichos problemas. Sin embargo, la aparición en el transcurso de las dos últimas décadas de una serie de tendencias y movimientos que se manifiestan por igual en el ámbito de la psicología y de las didácticas apunta, de forma inequívoca, a una mayor interconexión e interrela- ción entre ambas aproximaciones disciplinares.     

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.     

Rites of Passage: Does adaptation to university mean severing connections?

Many factors go into the decision of selecting a university, ranging from the overall costs and the programme of study to the institute’s reputation; however, accommodation while at university and proximity of the university to one’s permanent abode also play important roles in this decision-making process. Thus, first-year students experience different stages of separation from their prior networks depending on their individual situations. The results of this Ontario (Canada) 2012 study add to prior research by indicating that separation of students’ living arrangements and distance from home impact on transition and incorporation variables, which influenced students’ adaptation to university.     

Educating Nontraditional Students Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration

For over 30 years, researchers and practitioners have identified challenges unique to small, rural community colleges. The purpose of this study was to examine the distinctive problems facing rural community colleges today and the challenges those institutions must address to fulfill their mission in rural America. There are 5 current challenges commonly identified by 10 rural community college administrators in Kansas: technology use, grant writing, an evolving student population and corresponding changes to the mission, funding inequalities between institutions, and hiring qualified people. Identified challenges were compared with problems described in the literature from the last 30 years.     

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.