我国聋人高等工科教育个人投资的内部收益率研究

在市场经济条件下高等教育越来越多地被人们视作一种理性投资行为,对教育活动成本和预期收益的判断成为政府部门和受教育者个人投资决策的重要参考因素。通过调查问卷,运用教育经济学的内部收益率法对聋人高等工科教育个人投资的成本收益进行分析。研究发现。我国聋人高等工科教育个体投资的内部收益率约为11％。结果表明：1．聋人接受高等工科教育具有正的内部收益率;2．聋人接受高等工科教育的内部收益率低于普通高等教育。     

Understanding school districts as learning systems: Some lessons from three cases of complex transformation

We report on a study of three school jurisdictions in the province of Alberta. The original premise for the research on which this report is based was to investigate the diverse ways that school districts had administered resources that were provided through a major initiative to improve learning in the province. This account is not centrally concerned with how funds were utilized; rather, we report on how districts?? strategies and emphases within the initiative offer windows into the their systemic characters. The range of manifest characters, we argue, is a useful construct to inform policy, ensure the presence of necessary supports and structures, implement appropriate accountability measures, and set reasonable goals for large-scale initiatives in education.     

Motivations to Become Vocational Education and Training Educators: A Person-Oriented Approach

Given the scarcity of educators in Swiss vocational education and training (VET) and the lack of scientific knowledge about these individuals, the aim of the present study was to investigate motivations to become VET educators. In order to focus on individuals instead of variables, a typological approach was adopted and motivational profiles were built. The Factors Influencing Teaching choice framework was adapted to the context of the study and used to investigate multiple motivations, beliefs about the occupation, and pedagogical beliefs in a sample of 605 teachers and trainers from the German speaking and French speaking parts of Switzerland. Five profiles of motivation were extracted from the data, pointing to heterogeneity in the sample. Differences in socio-demographics, antecedent socialization, beliefs about the occupation, and satisfaction with career choice were found. On this basis, the authors suggest guidelines about how to advertise and attract individuals to become VET educators. Notably, the values to emphasize in order to make the occupation attractive have to be adapted to the linguistic region and the type of educators targeted.     

How epistemic reflexivity enables teacher educators’ teaching for diversity: Exploring a pedagogical framework for critical thinking

Recent research points to the importance of teacher educators teaching for diversity in initial teacher education programmes. Teaching for diversity is an approach to teacher education in which an understanding of specialist literature and a focus on critical thinking supports a social justice agenda as opposed to merely using different tips and tricks to prepare future teachers for teaching diverse learners in the classroom. In this study, we explored how Australian and New Zealand teacher educators negotiated a social justice agenda in teacher education programmes, using a new transdisciplinary framework of epistemic reflexivity. The Epistemic Reflexivity for Teacher Education (ER-TED) framework draws on epistemic cognition (Clark Chinn’s Aims, Ideals, Reliable epistemic processes – AIR – framework) and Margaret Archer’s reflexivity to explore knowledge claims in teacher educators’ pedagogical decision-making. The findings identified how teacher educators in our study discerned and deliberated with respect to epistemic aims for justification, which involve transformative critical thinking and critical thinking for self. They reported good knowledge (ideals) as being scholarly in nature, and reliable epistemic processes based on higher-order thinking (analysis and evaluating competing ideas) or engaging with multiple perspectives. The teacher educators in our study are clear examples of how strong overall evaluative epistemic stances enable teaching for social justice. We argue that the ER-TED framework can help us as a profession to address teaching for diversity in teacher education programmes based on the belief that the pursuit of social justice requires an evaluativist epistemic stance.     

Devising a plan to solve Fermi problems involving large numbers

Fermi problems are open, non-standard problems that require the students to make assumptions about the problem situation and to estimate relevant quantities before engaging in, often, simple calculations (Ärlebäck The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast, 6(3):331–364, 2009). Our study focuses on the plans—schemes aimed at solving—devised by students aged 12–16 years to solve Fermi problems involving big numbers. The strategies which appear in these schemes are characterized herein and analyzed to find out to what extent they would be suitable to solve the problems. Some of the identified strategies are related to magnitude estimation (use of a reference point), whereas others correspond to modeling processes (grid distribution, use of a concentration measurement, reductions of a problem, and use of a proportion). We conclude that Fermi problems involving large numbers may constitute a good opportunity to discuss heuristics and problem solving strategies in compulsory secondary education classes.     

The role of nonspeech rhythm in Spanish word reading

Recent literacy research shows an increasing interest in the influence of prosody on literacy acquisition. The current study examines the relationship of nonspeech rhythmic skills to children's reading acquisition, and their possible relation to stress assignment in Spanish, a syllable‐timed language. Sixty‐six third graders with no reading difficulties were scored on measures of nonspeech rhythm, word‐level decoding skill, reading fluency and reading with correct assignment of lexical stress. After controlling for verbal intelligence and working memory, hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that nonspeech rhythm predicted unique variance in reading fluency and correct stress assignment; it did not predict decoding skills. Given that Spanish is a syllable‐timed as opposed to stress‐timed language like English, the association between nonspeech rhythm, reading fluency and stress assignment found in our study suggests that nonspeech rhythm may be a universal factor in reading acquisition, independent of the type of linguistic rhythm.     

Strategies and resources for contextualising the curriculum based on the funds of knowledge approach: a literature review

This article aims to describe and illustrate how the curriculum can be contextualised through different educational experiences based on the funds of knowledge approach. Educational contextualisation is understood to be the linking of curricular content (literacy, science, mathematics, social sciences) with students’ lives, including prior learning experiences from their homes and communities. The literature review began by surveying 59 articles retrieved from the ERIC database after entering the search terms “funds of knowledge” and “teaching methods”. Out of these, 22 peer reviewed papers were selected based on the following criteria: the paper should illustrate how artefacts produced by students (photographs, texts, artistic productions, digital stories) can be put to pedagogical use by turning them into resources to mobilise knowledge and experiences inside and outside school. The results are discussed in light of the CREDE Standards for Effective Pedagogy, as well as the notion of funds of identity, which has been proposed recently within the context of the funds of knowledge approach.     

Comprehension strategy training in content areas

The main objective of this paper is to present the results of two studies developed to test the effectiveness of teaching different strategies for identifying important information in the context of ordinary instruction. Training in both studies can be characterised as metacognitively oriented and contextualised in content areas. Also, the same strategies have been the object of training in both cases. Previous knowledge activation and diagrammatic representation of relations among text ideas were among the main strategies trained. 31 subjects (11 to 12 years-old) participated in the first study, and 104 (11 to 14 years-old) in the second one. In both cases, subjects were divided into two groups, experimental and control. Assessment was made through an interview carried out separately with two texts. Results reached statistical significance mainly in study 2, but only for students in higher grades. These results show the effectiveness of the kind of training developed and the importance of taking into account the developmental and/or academic level of students in order to determinate when to introduce strategy training.