Sex education in modern and contemporary China: Interrupted debates across the last century

Since the late 1980s sex education has been widely promoted in the PRC, but this is not the first time in China's modern history that attempts to develop sex education have been made. The present essay traces the development of sex education debates over the last century, identifying the historical, political and social contexts in which they originated. It looks at contemporary sex education as part of a fragmented history characterised by thematic and ideological continuities as well as interruptions. In its focus on contemporary debates, this essay shows that sex education in China is largely dominated by an ‘abstinence only’ approach which remained scarcely questioned until recent times.     

Do Italian dyslexic children use the lexical reading route efficiently? An orthographic judgment task

The study uses an orthographic judgment task to evaluate the efficiency of the lexical reading route in Italian dyslexic children. It has been suggested that Italian dyslexic children rely prevalently on the sub-word-level routine for reading. However, it is not easy to test the lexical reading route in Italian directly because of the lack of critical items (irregular words), so visual lexical decision tasks and the comprehension/detection of pseudo-homophones are often used. While the former may also be solved on the basis of visual familiarity or phonological re-codification, the latter also involves conceptual and syntactic skills. Eleven dyslexic children participated in the study, performing an orthographic judgment task on stimuli with two phonologically plausible spellings, of which only one was orthographically correct. Their performance was compared with those of 11 proficient readers. The dyslexic children showed selective impairment in detecting phonologically plausible errors, but their performance was normal when required to judge errors inserted in words with regular orthography, i.e., devoid of orthographic ambiguity, and for which a sub-word-level reading procedure is sufficient to guarantee a good performance. Overall, data are coherent with a diagnosis of surface dyslexia, with most children showing defective orthographic lexical processing.

Networking theoretical frames: the ReMath enterprise

In this article of the special issue devoted to the European project ReMath, we present and discuss the affordances of this project in terms of networking between theoretical frameworks. After clarifying the vision of theories and networking adopted in this project, we introduce the methodological constructs that have been developed and used in ReMath for performing the planned networking enterprise. We then present its outcomes, focusing on different facets of this networking activity: the identification of possible connections and complementarities between frameworks, the identification and elaboration of boundary objects between cultures, and the progressive building of a shared theoretical framework regarding semiotic representations. In the last part of this article, we review the whole networking enterprise from the perspective of research praxeology.     

Defining in Classroom Activities

This paper discusses some aspects concerning the defining process in geometrical context, in the reference frame of the theory of figural concepts. The discussion will consider two different, but not antithetical, points of view. On the one hand, the problem of definitions will be considered in the general context of geometrical reasoning; on the other hand, the problem of definition will be considered an educational problem and consequently, analysed in the context of school activities. An introductory discussion focuses on definitions from the point of view of both Mathematics and education. The core of the paper concerns the analysis of some examples taken from a teaching experiment at the 6th grade level. The interaction between figural and conceptual aspects of geometrical reasoning emerges from the dynamic of collective discussions: the contributions of different voices in the discussion allows conflicts to appear and draw toward a harmony between figural and conceptual components. A basic role is played by the intervention of the teacher in guiding the discussion and mediating the defining process.     

From practice to theory,Ovide Decroly for Brazilian classrooms: a tale of appropriation

In this article the authors attempt to understand and apprehend the dynamic transnational movement of the appropriation of Ovide Decroly’s ideas and its ‘flight to Brazilian lands’. They work with the assumption that Decroly’s ideas, entangled in different levels, are articulating and interacting with the Brazilian cultural and educational environment. The intention is to get close to the classroom and to have a glimpse at the practices inside. To approach classroom practices, a traditional archive has been chosen, which is constituted by the pedagogical press, to have a thorough look within: pedagogical periodicals and pedagogical collections, and analyses of two books and six articles concerning Decroly’s ideas published in Brazil between 1927 and 1931. Methodological discussions are first introduced, and the substantial contents of the books and articles concerning Decroly’s ideas under study are then presented. In the analyses the authors debate what happened to Decroly’s ideas when Brazilian teachers and intellectuals used them.     

Genetic and environmental influences on sex-typed behavior during the preschool years

The genetic and environmental etiologies of sex-typed behavior were examined during the preschool years in a sample of 3,990 three- to four-year-old twin and non-twin sibling pairs. Results showed moderate genetic and significant shared environmental influence for boys and substantial genetic and moderate shared environmental influence for girls. For both boys and girls, twin-specific shared environmental effects contributed to twins' similarity in gender role behavior and accounted for approximately 22% of the shared environmental variance. These findings extend previous research conducted with older samples by showing not only important genetic contributions to gender role behavior but also an important role for shared environment. The inclusion of non-twin siblings showed that some of the shared environmental influence is specific to twins.     

Introduction to Proof: The Mediation of a Dynamic Software Environment

This paper, which reports on a long-term teaching experiment carried out in the 9^th and 10^th grades of a scientific highschool, is part of a larger co-ordinated research project. The workconstitutes a `research for innovation', in which action in the classroom isboth a means and result of a study aimed at introducing pupils totheoretical thinking and at studying the ways in which this process isrealised.The purpose of the study is to clarify the role of a particular software,Cabri-géomètre, in the teaching/learning process. Assuming aVygotskian perspective, attention is focussed on the social construction ofknowledge and on the semiotic mediation accomplished through culturalartefacts; the functioning of specific elements of the software will bedescribed and analysed as instruments of semiotic mediation used by theteacher in classroom activities.