中美大对比:在哪儿幸福更容易?

在中国涌现"出国热"的那几年,我们的父辈以及我们都在向往着国外的福利、教育和生活环境。有时候梦见自己身处国外都会是一件乐事,值得人们茶余饭后聊上半天。长大以后,随着国外的YouTube、Twitter和国内各类视频网站以及微博客的兴起,我们越来越多地了解到国外也有贫民窟、国外也有经济危机和失业、国外也有腐败和民主上的不完善,而更可怕的是,国外还有允许携带私人枪支的国民……出国,真的有那么好吗?在这篇文章里,一个地地道道的纽约人将向你叙述一个他自己总结出的结论:在中国,要幸福,并不需要太多。     

Computer laboratory workshops as learning environments for university business statistics: validation of questionnaires

Learning Environments Research - Research on learning environments at the higher-education level has been quite sparse compared with studies at other educational levels. Because statistics is...     

Gender differences in science achievement: Do school effects make a difference?

The problem of the underrepresentation of girls in science in Australian schools is often attributed to their poor performance. Yet the role of both the home and the school in affecting female science achievement is rarely examined empirically. The comprehensiveness of the Second International Science Study database provided an excellent opportunity to investigate the presence of gender differences in science achievement. Although previous studies of gender differences in science achievement have relied on methodology that has not adequately accounted for the school effects, this study used the design effect and hierarchical linear modeling (multilevel analysis) to explore whether there were significant gender differences. The relative contribution of schools to student achievement was examined, and school-level differences were found to contribute significantly toward explaining variations in student performance. Although statistically significant sex differences were found in physics achievement for 10-year-old, 14-year-old, and year-12 students, school effects were much more powerful in explaining student differences (9–19%) when compared with gender (3%).     

The Discourses of Social Justice in Education

What the existing organization of schooling presupposes...is that in consumption terms, the world consists of equally powerful individual actors. Such, of course, is not the case in a hierarchically ordered capitalist system, where labour and capital, and indeed different forms of both, have differential access to resources enabling them to consume. By largely intervening only in provisional relations, the state fails to recognize the central dynamic of education ‐‐ that provision and consumption are not coterminous. In essence, state intervention does not go far enough. (Lynch, 1989, p.127)     

Feed-forward: students gaining more from assessment via deeper engagement in video-recorded presentations

Presentation feedback can be limited in its feed-forward value, as students do not have their actual presentation available for review whilst reflecting upon the feedback. This study reports on students’ perceptions of the learning and feed-forward value of an oral presentation assessment. Students self-marked their performance immediately after their presentation, after reviewing a video recording of their presentation and wrote a reflection relating to their experience. Survey data revealed that most students viewed all aspects of the assessment task positively and they rated the process as providing substantial learning value. They also indicated that the video review and overall assessment exercise provided valuable feed-forward information that would assist them to improve future presentations. These data were further supported by content analysis of the qualitative data. Students noted that they perceived the video review task as self-enabling. They also noted that the self-reflection and self-marking exercise provided time for thought although it was personally challenging. Therefore, via carefully designed assessment, it is possible to provide a deep learning opportunity from oral presentations that can feed-forward to enhance students’ future presentations.