When Classrooms Matter: implications of between‐classroom variability for educational policy in Israel

This study assesses several policy implications of within‐school, between‐classroom variability in pupil achievement. It diverges from current school effect studies by directly modelling pupil achievement in the Jerusalem public primary school system. This three‐level study includes pupils, classrooms and schools, thus allowing an appropriate estimate of the variations between these three levels. The findings show that between‐classroom variability is consistently greater than the estimated variation between schools. These findings contrast with traditional school‐level analyses that usually ignore within‐school variability. In the light of these findings we address three educational and policy issues. First, we probe into the moral consequences of between‐classroom, within‐school variability, specifically focusing on issues of choice and commitment. Second, we scrutinize the administrative policy of ‘social integration’ and reflect on some educational consequences that result from our findings. Third, we assess the Israeli version of ‘school league tables’ and discuss their usefulness as a means of resource allocation     

Literacy ability and phonological processing skills amongst dyslexic and non-dyslexic speakers of Arabic

This paper investigates the relationship between phonological processing and reading ability amongst grade 4 and grade 5 Arabic speaking children in Egypt. In addition to measuring reading level, the study assessed the children’s ability to identify rhymes, delete individual phonemes from words, retain and manipulate sequences of digit names and rapidly access verbal labels. Further literacy and literacy-related tasks required children to decode novel letter strings, to distinguish similar words, to identify words within letter chains and to correctly spell dictated text. A non-verbal ability measure was also included to allow comparisons to be made between a group of poor readers with good non-verbal skills (dyslexics) with a control group of chronological-age-matched normal readers with equivalent average scores on the non-verbal task. Results indicated relationships between literacy ability, decoding and phonological processing within this cohort, as well as identifying differences between dyslexic and control groups that suggest Arabic dyslexics show signs of poor phonological skills. The study supports the view that Arabic dyslexic children have impairments in the phonological processing domain.     

本-大卫的生平和工作

约瑟夫·本-大卫,小时叫格鲁斯,1920年8月出生在匈牙利西北部布达佩斯和维也纳之间的一个小镇哥雅(gyr)。格鲁斯家属中上层犹太家庭,富有远见同时     

Raman crystal lasers in the visible and near-infrared

Raman lasers based on potassium gadolinium tungstate and lead tungstate crystals pumped bya≈120 ps Nd: YAG laser at 1.064 μm were developed. High reflection mirrors for the Stokes wavelength have been used to generate near-infrared and eye safe spectral region of 1.15–1.32 μm. Second harmonic generation of the generated Raman lasers was observed. Eifficient multiple Stokes and anti-Stokes picosecond generation in 64 crystals have been shown to exhibit stimulated Raman scattering on about 700 lines covering the whole visible and near-infrared spectrum. All stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) wavelengths in the visible and near-infrared spectrum are identified and attributed to the SRS-active vibration modes of these crystals.     

School Organization and Market Ecology: a realist sociological look at the infrastructure of school choice

Programs of school choice are based largely on the idea of a free market’. Recent reform efforts have been based on the assumption that market‐driven educational systems would bring higher achievement levels and greater satisfaction among clients. According to popular views, parents would shop for a school just as they do for any other commodity and competition between schools would ensue, with each school trying to improve itself thereby attracting consumers. There is a major drawback to this reasoning. Markets are rarely completely free from regulation and control, and the desires of individuals do not fully explain the social facts of school choice. As a complement to current school choice studies, a structural explanation of school choice within the theory of network analysis is presented. The study analyses choice in terms of inter‐school student transfers and explains choice as the combined result of two factors. The first is the organization of student mobility in schools, in terms of vacant positions (timing and volume) and student body composition, which posits nine ideal types of school organization. The second factor is the ecology of the market, given in the number of schools in each type. Research conducted in a large city in Israel serves as an example for the approach. The more general implications of the study suggest directions for the theoretical refinement of mobility and attainment studies in sociology.     

L'intégration après coup ou à la source

Sans résuméAllocution au Congrès sur l'Intégration des enseignements scientifiques, à Varna, 11–19 septembre 1968.-Quelques paragraphes proviennent d'un article publié enEnseignement 9 (1963), 28–44.     

Fiabilité, validité et pertinence-critères de la recherche sur l'enseignement de la mathématique

The terms reliability and validity here are used in a broader context than that of testing. Educational research often stresses reliability, that is internal consistency at the expense of validity and relevance. How research may start, is shown by a study of the IREM of Grenoble, which exhibits the clash between text and context, in particular the magic context. As medicine did in the past, educational research may start with phenomenological diagnosis but then progress to etiology in order finally to focus on prevention, which requires a more profound understanding of individual development. Meanwhile we are faced with a new aspect of research: legitimation.

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Conférence faite le 29 novembre 1980 à l'UER de Didactique des Disciplines, Université Paris VII.