The Anthropogenic ‘Greenhouse Effect’: Greek Prospective Primary Teachers’ Ideas About Causes, Consequences and Cures

This study explores the ideas of Greek prospective primary teachers about the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, particularly about its causes, consequences and cures. For this purpose, a survey was conducted: 265 prospective teachers completed a closed-form questionnaire. The results showed serious misconceptions in all areas (causes, consequences and cures). The most prominent misconception found by this survey is the conflation between the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer depletion, which is widely reported in the literature. There is also the notion that ??good things?? (like clean beaches) can help ameliorate the greenhouse effect, whereas ??bad things?? (like insecticides) can enhance it. One of the secondary results of the survey is that prospective teachers?? main source of information about the greenhouse effect is school. This calls for educational interventions to fight misconceptions at the source. Some suggestions are presented in this paper. The results of this study are compared with the results of two similar studies conducted in the UK and in Turkey.     

Promoting Students’ Interest and Motivation Towards Science Learning: the Role of Personal Needs and Motivation Orientations

This study aimed to design a teaching sequence for science education that enabled lower secondary school students to enhance their motivation towards science. Further, it looked to examine the way the designed teaching sequence affected students with different motivational profiles. Industry site visits, with embodied theory-based motivational features were included as part of the designed teaching sequence. The sequence was implemented in Finland and Greece with 54 participants, 27 from each country. Quantitative data was collected using the Evaluation of Science Inquiry Activities Questionnaire, based on the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory but did not map the expected outcomes. Interviews, however, showed that students with different motivational profiles found aspects within the module that met their psychological needs as explained by Self-Determination Theory. The results offer a perspective to adolescents’ psychological needs along with some insights into how students mediate the way they value an activity in the context of science education.     

Views of prospective early childhood education teachers,towards mathematics and its instruction

The questions this paper attempts to answer are related to the attitudes of student teachers of the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Patras (Greece) towards mathematics, as well as their views on the instruction of mathematics in Early Childhood Education. The research sample included 52 students in the fourth semester of studies, who were invited to answer a questionnaire with respect to mathematics and its instruction. The findings reveal the negative attitude our research subjects adopt towards mathematics. Their epistemological views on mathematics and its instruction do not constitute a single and solid conceptual system. These findings underline the need to improve the mathematical education offered to student teachers of Early Childhood Education.

Les questions posées par la présente recherche concernent les attitudes envers les mathématiques ainsi que les conceptions sur l'enseignement de mathématiques des étudiants—futurs enseignants du Département de l'Education Pré‐scolaire de l'université de Patras. Cinquante‐deux étudiants de la quatrième année de leurs études ont participé à cette recherche en remplissant un questionnaire sur les mathématiques et leur enseignement. L'analyse des réponses a montré que les étudiants ont des attitudes négatives envers les mathématiques et que leurs conceptions épistémologiques sur les mathématiques et leur enseignement ne constituent pas un cadre conceptuel unitaire et cohérent. Ces constatations soulignent la nécessite de reformulation du contenu de l'éducation mathématique adressé aux étudiants—futurs enseignants à l'école maternelle.

La pesquisa actual está intentando responder a cuestiones relacionadas con las actitudes de los estudiantes—futuros institutores—de la Facultad de Pedagogía Preescolar de la Universidad de Patras (Grecia), en relación a la matemática y con sus puntos de vista en relación a la enseñanza de los conceptos matemáticos en la Educación Preescolar. La muestra representativa de la investigación se compone de 52 estudiantes del cuarto semestre de la carrera a quienes se solicitó responder a un cuestionario relacionado con la matemática y su didáctica. El escrutinio del cuestionario indica que los sujetos de la muestra mantienen una actitud negativa ante la matemática y su didáctica. Además, sus convicciones y conjeturas de ellos no componen un sistema de comprensión unificado y conciso acerca de la matemática y su didáctica. Dicho escrutinio subraya que hace falta mejorar la educación de la matemática que se presta en nuestra Facultad de Pedagogía.

Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Einstellung von Studenten—zukünftigen Lehrern—des Fachs Pädagogik am Institut für Frühe Kindheit, Universität Patras, Griechenland, gegenüber der Mathematik. Insbesondere befasst sie sich mit deren Wahrnehmung der Vermittlung von mathematischen Begriffen im Kindergarten. Im Rahmen der Studie wurden 52 Studenten des vierten Semesters aufgefordert, einen Fragebogen zur Mathematikausbildung auszufüllen. Aus den Ergebnissen resultiert eine negative Haltung der Befragten gegenüber der Mathematik und deren Unterricht. Des weiteren bilden ihre Wahrnehmungsweise der Mathematik und des Mathematikunterrichts kein einheitliches und konsistentes konzeptuelles System. Diese Ergebnisse heben die Notwendigkeit einer Verbesserung der angebotenen Mathematikausbildung in unserem Fachbereich Pädagogik hervor.     

Enhancing student teachers’ epistemological beliefs about models and conceptual understanding through a model-based inquiry process

In this study we present the structure and implementation of a model-based inquiry teaching–learning sequence (TLS) integrating expressive, experimental and exploratory modelling pedagogies in a cyclic manner, with the aim of enhancing primary education student teachers’ epistemological beliefs about the aspects, nature, purpose and change of models as well as their conceptual understanding of light phenomena related to properties of optical fibres. The subjects were 16 prospective primary teachers involved in modelling activities, employing both hands-on experiments and computer modelling activities, based on the application of the ray model. Student teachers were tested before and after the implementation of the TLS by semi-structured interviews and a written questionnaire. Results show that before the TLS most students adopted epistemologically naïve realistic beliefs about models, whereas after the TLS there was an overall significant transition from naïve to more sophisticated epistemological beliefs, as well as significant improvements in their conceptual knowledge about light phenomena. Nevertheless, the relation between epistemological beliefs and conceptual understanding seems to be aspect-dependent, so our evidence suggests that more educational effort is required in order to establish a coherent relationship between them.     

Bifurcations and catastrophes of a two-degrees-of-freedom nonlinear model simulating the buckling and postbuckling of rectangular plates

The nonlinear buckling and postbuckling behavior of rectangular plates in symmetric and antisymmetric modes is re-examined, in the context of Bifurcation and Catastrophe Theories, using a two-degrees-of-freedom model, which has been adopted for the same purpose in the pioneer literature. At first the perfect system is dealt with in detail, symbolically utilizing the exact as well as the approximate equilibrium equations, the latter being products of a universal unfolding of the original total potential energy function. Conditions for the existence of remote secondary bifurcations are fully assessed and the stability of critical states is determined, revealing sudden qualitative changes in the postbuckling response of the perfect system, which have been also reported for the actual continuous structural system—the rectangular plate—using the von Kárman equations. Thereafter, the imperfection sensitivity is dealt with, introducing symmetric as well as asymmetric imperfections, considered as individual or consecutive perturbations of the perfect system. It is found that symmetry breaking bifurcations give birth to complicated cusp singularities, which may lead to unexpected jumps from one to two-mode remote postbuckling behavior. Finally, considering the general case of random imperfections, higher order two-mode singularities are revealed, mainly of the double-cusp catastrophe type, which have been also discovered in the postbuckling response of rectangular plates, a fact validating the choice of the foregoing nonlinear simulation.     

The influence of the school hygiene and paedology movement on the early development of special education in Greece, 1900–1940: the leading role of Emmanuel Lambadarios

This study focuses on the contribution of Emmanuel Lambadarios to special education in Greece in the early twentieth century. It examines Lambadarios’s involvement in special education, culminating in the establishment of the ‘Model Special School of Athens’ (PESA), the first public special education school for children with intellectual disabilities. It specifically explores Lambadarios’s key perceptions of the education of children with disabilities influenced by his medical-centred school hygiene and paedological views, studied within the broader international context of the first four decades of the twentieth century. This is an attempt to shed light on an unknown aspect of the early history of special education in Greece, which appears to be influenced by medicine. Moreover, the latent rivalry between the physician Emmanuel Lambadarios and the educator/head teacher of the PESA, Rosa Imvrioti, indicates an educational resistance to the attempted medicalisation of the early development of special education.     

Teacher-led design of an adaptive learning environment

This paper discusses a requirements engineering process that exemplifies teacher-led design in the case of an envisioned system for adaptive learning. Such a design poses various challenges and still remains an open research issue in the field of adaptive learning. Starting from a scenario-based elicitation method, the whole process was highly participatory, with requirements validation in iterative cycles. The contribution of the paper is twofold: (a) it exposes the design of an environment which addresses the related challenges mentioned by the participants and the literature and (b) it suggests a methodology of framing key requirements into a set of critical success factors for meeting the end-users’ expectations. The latter could be crucial in cases where the available resources are limited, but the quality of the product must not be sacrificed.     

Harmonising codification and socialisation in knowledge management

Knowledge Management Research & Practice - Decision makers process and combine manifold types of data, information and knowledge, available in various forms in the organisation. The aim of...     

Regulative discourses of primary schooling in Greece: memories of punishment

The mechanisms of discipline and power within the institution of the school constitute, in part, the relationship between society and childhood. This article traces the relationship between official regulative discourses of control and punishment practices over students in primary school. It focuses on the memories of schooling of first-year students in a Department of Primary Education at a Greek University. The concepts of power, discipline and discourse from the theory of Michel Foucault are drawn on to examine the pedagogical control over primary school pupils. The research was carried out using an open questionnaire in which participants were asked to describe their experiences of school punishment. The key findings showed that corporal punishment is dominant in the memory of the majority of research participants. The reason for the pupils’ punishment was mainly their making noise in the classroom and their poor performance in core subjects of the curriculum. These findings are significant for the sociology of education as they reveal the real and symbolic violence of school life that endures in memories of childhood, schooling and society.     

A competence-based industrial learning approach for factories of the future

Manufacturing industry can improve its competitiveness through innovation and technological excellence, and appropriate Industrial Learning can help to achieve this goal through allowing the manufacturing workforce to acquire new skills related to the advanced developments in information and communication technologies. This raises the need for new Industrial Learning tools and methods from the viewpoint of learning content, learning processes, and delivery mechanisms. In this paper, we present a generic competence-based approach for Industrial Learning developed in the framework of ActionPlanT project. The approach is composed of (i) an Industrial Learning model which serves to represent and understand competence-based learning, and (ii) a methodology which implements through a number of steps the Industrial Learning actions defined using the Industrial Learning model in industrial organisations. Both the model and the methodology are presented in details. A metrics-based method for evaluating the implementation of the learning actions defined using the approach is also described.